LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  Of 
CALIFORNIA 
SAN  DIEGO 


OLD    FAMILIAR    FACES 


B 


o:o.  f.  Holly 

MRS.   WILLIAM    MORRIS 

"  She  was  the  most  lovely  woman  I  have  ever  known,  her  beauty  was 
incredible. " —  Theodore  IVatts-Dunton 


OLD 

FAMILIAR 
FACES 

BY 

THE  O  DORE 
WATTS-DUNTON 
V 

AUTHOR      OF 
"  AYLWIN" 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  DUTTON  AND  COMPANY 
MCMXVI 


W18 


THK  ATHENAEUM  PRESS,  LONDON,  ENGLAND. 
4 


INTRODUCTION. 

FOR  some  years  before  his  death  it  was 
the  intention  of  Theodore  Watts-Dunton 
to  publish  in  volume  form  under  the 
title  of  '  Old  Familiar  Faces/  the  recollec- 
tions of  his  friends  that  he  had  from  time  to 
time  contributed  to  The  Aihenczum.  Had  his 
range  of  interests  been  less  wide  he  might  have 
found  the  time  in  which  to  further  this  and 
many  other  literary  projects  he  had  formed  ; 
but  he  was,  unfortunately,  very  slow  to  write, 
and  slower  still  to  publish.  His  long  life 
produced  in  published  works  a  number  of 
critical  and  biographical  essays  contributed 
to  periodicals  and  encyclopaedias,  a  romance 
('Aylwin'),  a  sheaf  of  poems  ('The  Coming 
of  Love  '),  two  of  the  most  stimulating  critical 
pronouncements  that  his  century  produced 
('  Poetry  '  and  '  The  Renascence  of  Wonder  ') , 
a  handful  of  introductions  to  classics — and  that 
is  all. 

Only  those  who  were  frequent  visitors  at 
"  The  Pines  "  can  form  any  idea  of  his  keen 
interest  in  life  and  affairs,  which  seemed  to 
grow  rather  than  to  diminish  with  the  passage 
of  each  year,  even  when  81  had  passed  him 
by.  At  his  charmingly  situated  house  at  the 
foot  of  Putney  Hill,  he  lived  a  life  of  as 
little  seclusion  [as  he  would  have  lived  in 

5 


6  INTRODUCTION 

Fleet  Street.  Here  he  received  his  friends  and 
acquaintances,  and  there  was  little  happening 
in  the  world  outside  with  which  he  was  un- 
acquainted. 

He  was  a  tremendous  worker,  and  only  a 
few  months  before  his  death  he  wrote  of  "  the 
enormous  pressure  of  work  "  that  was  upon 
him,  telling  his  correspondent  that  he  had 
"  no  idea,  no  one  can  have  any  idea,  what  it 
is.  I  am  an  early  riser  and  breakfast  at  seven, 
and  from  that  hour  until  seven  in  the  evening, 
I  am  in  full  swing  of  my  labours  with  the  aid  of 
two  most  intelligent  secretaries." 

To  outlive  his  generation  is,  perhaps,  the 
worst  fate  that  can  befall  a  man  ;  but  this 
cannot  truly  be  said  of  Theodore  Watts-Dunton, 
who  seemed  to  be  of  no  generation  in  particular. 
His  interest  in  the  life  of  the  twentieth  century, 
a  life  so  different  from  that  of  his  own  youth 
and  early  manhood,  was  strangely  keen  and 
insistent.  Sometimes  in  talking  of  his  great 
contemporaries,  Tennyson,  Meredith,  Swin- 
burne, Rossetti,  Morris,  Matthew  Arnold,  Borrow, 
there  would  creep  into  his  voice  a  note  of  remini- 
scent sadness ;  but  it  always  seemed  poetic 
rather  than  personal.  It  may  be  said  that  he 
never  really  grew  up,  that  his  spirit  never  tired. 
His  laugh  was  as  youthful  as  the  hearty  "  My 
dear  fellow,"  with  which  he  would  address  his 
friends. 

His  most  remarkable  quality  was  his  youth. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

His  body  had  aged,  his  voice  had  shrunk  ;  but 
once  launched  into  the  subject  of  literature, 
Greek  verse  in  particular  (he  regarded  the 
Attic  tongue  as  the  peculiar  vehicle  for  poetic 
expression),  he  seemed  immediately  to  become 
a  young  man.  When  quoting  his  favourite 
passage  from  Keats,  his  voice  would  falter 
with  emotion. 

Charm'd  magic  casements,  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas,  in  faery  lands  forlorn. 

These    lines  he   regarded  as   the   finest   in 
English  poetry. 

He  possessed  the  great  gift  of  conversation. 
Every  subject  seemed  to  develope  quite  natur- 
ally out  of  that  which  had  preceded  it,  and 
although  in  a  single  hour  he  would  have  passed 
from   ^Eschylus   and   Sophocles  to   twentieth- 
century  publishers,  there  was  never  any  break 
or  suspicion  of  a  change  of  topic.    Seated  on  the 
sofa  in  the  middle  of  his  study,  with  reminders 
of   his  friendship  with   Rossetti  gazing  down 
upon  him  from  the  walls,  he  welcomed  his 
friends  with  that  almost  boyish  cordiality  that 
so  endeared  him  to  their  hearts.     If  they  had 
been  doing  anything  of  which  the  world  knew, 
he  would  be  sure  to  have  heard  all  about  it. 
His  mind  was   as  alert   as  his  memory  was 
remarkable  ;    but  above  all  he  was  possessed 
of  a  very  real  charm,  a  charm  that  did  not 
vanish  before  the  on-coming  years.     It  was  this 
quality  of  interesting  himself  in  the  doings  of 


8  INTRODUCTION 

others  that  retained  for  him  the  friendships 
that  his  personality  and  cordiality  had  created. 

Few  men  have  been  so  richly  endowed  with 
great  friendships  as  Theodore  Watts-Dunton : 
Swinburne,  the  Rossettis,  William  Morris, 
Matthew  Arnold,  Tennyson,  Borrow,  Lowell, 
Latham,  men  of  vastly  dissimilar  temperaments ; 
yet  he  was  on  terms  of  intimacy  with  them  all, 
and  as  they  one  by  one  passed  away,  to  him 
was  left  the  sad  duty  of  giving  to  the  world  by 
far  the  most  intimate  picture  of  their  various  per- 
sonalities. There  was  obviously  some  subtle 
quality  in  Watts-Dunton's  nature  that  not  only 
attracted  to  him  great  minds  in  the  world  of 
art  and  letters  ;  but  which  seemed  to  hold  cap- 
tive their  affection  for  a  lifetime.  Even  an 
instinctive  recluse  such  as  Borrow,  a  man  almost 
too  sensitive  for  friendship,  found  in  Watts- 
Dunton  one  whose  capacity  for  friendship  was 
so  great  as  to  override  all  other  considerations. 
Watts-Dunton  was  "  the  friend  of  friends  "  to 
Rossetti,  who  wished  to  make  him  his  heir, 
and  was  dissuaded  only  when  he  saw  that 
to  do  so  would  pain  his  friend,  who  re- 
garded it  as  an  act  of  injustice  to  Rossetti's 
own  family.  During  his  lifetime  Swinburne 
desired  to  make  over  to  him  his  entire  fortune. 
The  man  to  whom  these  tributes  were  paid 
was  undoubtedly  possessed  of  some  rare  and 
strange  gift. 

The  greatest  among  his  many  great  friend- 


AI.CKKNON    CHARLES    SWINBURNE 


INTRODUCTION  g 

ships  was  with  Swinburne.  For  thirty  years 
they  lived  together  at  "  The  Pines  "  in  the 
closest  unity  and  accord.  They  would  take 
their  walks  together,  discuss  the  hundred  and 
one  things  in  which  they  were  both  interested, 
living,  not  as  great  men  sometimes  live,  a 
frigid  existence  of  intellectual  loneliness ;  but 
showing  the  keenest  interest  in  the  affairs  of  the 
everyday,  as  well  as  of  the  literary,  world. 
When  death  at  last  severed  the  link  that  it 
had  taken  upwards  of  thirty  years  to 
forge,  it  is  not  strange  that  there  should 
be  no  reminiscences  written  of  the  man 
who  had  been  to  Watts-Dunton  more  than 
a  brother. 

It  was  not  always  easy  to  get  Watts-Dunton 
to  talk  of  those  he  had  known  so  intimately  ; 
but  when  he  did  so  it  was  frankly  and  freely. 
Once  when  telling  of  some  characteristic  act 
of  generosity  on  the  part  of  that  strangely 
composite  being,  half  genius,  half  schoolboy, 
William  Morris,  he  remarked,  "  Yes,  Morris 
was  a  very  dear  friend  of  mine;  but  he  had 
strange  limitations.  Swinburne  had  the  ut- 
most contempt  for  the  narrowness  of  his  out- 
look. It  was  incredible !  Outside  his  own 
domain  he  was  unintelligent  in  his  narrow- 
ness, and  frequently  bored  and  irritated  his 
friends." 

As  artist,  poet,  and  craftsman,  however, 
Watts-Dunton  spoke  with  enthusiasm  of  Morris ; 


io  INTRODUCTION 

but  intellectually  he  regarded  him  as  inferior 
to  Mrs.  Morris.  On  the  day  following  the 
announcement  of  her  death,  the  present  writer 
happened  to  be  taking  tea  at  "  The  Pines," 
and  the  conversation  not  unnaturally  turned 
upon  the  Morrises.  Watts-Dunton  called  atten- 
tion to  the  large  number  of  magnificent  Rossetti 
portraits  of  her  that  hung  from  the  walls  of  his 
study.  "  A  remarkable  woman,"  he  said,  "  a 
most  remarkable  woman  ;  superior  to  Morris 
intellectually,  she  reached  a  greater  mental 
height  than  he  was  capable  of,  yet  few  knew 
it."  Then  he  proceeded  to  tell  how  she  had 
acquired  French  and  Italian  with  the  greatest 
ease  and  facility.  When  Morris  had  met  her 
she  possessed  very  few  educational  advantages ; 
yet  she  very  quickly  made  good  her  short- 
comings. When  reminded  that  Mr.  H.  Buxton 
Forman  had  recently  written  that  he  had  seen 
beautiful  women  in  all  quarters  of  the  globe, 
'  but  never  one  so  strangely  lovely  and  majestic 
as  Mrs.  Morris,"  Watts-Dunton  remarked,  "  She 
was  the  most  lovely  woman  I  have  ever  known, 
her  beauty  was  incredible." 

In  answer  to  a  question  he  went  on  to  say 
that  Rossetti  painted  her  lips  with  the  utmost 
faithfulness.  In  spite  of  her  beauty  and  her 
high  mental  qualities,  she  was  very  shy  and 
retiring,  almost  fearful,  in  her  attitude  towards 
others. 

In  literature  and     criticism  Watts-Dunton 


INTRODUCTION  n 

stood  for  enthusiasm.  His  gospel  as  a  critic 
was  to  seek  for  the  good  that  is  to  be  found  in 
most  things,  literary  or  otherwise ;  and  what 
is,  perhaps,  most  remarkable  in  one  who  has 
known  so  many  great  men,  he  never  seemed  to 
draw  invidious  comparisons  between  the  writers 
and  artists  of  to-day  and  those  of  the  great 
Victorian  Era. 

Life  at  "  The  Pines  "  was  as  bright  as  natur- 
ally cheerful  and  bright  people  could  make  it, 
people  who  were  not  only  attracted  to  and 
interested  in  each  other ;  but  found  the  world 
an  exceedingly  good  place  in  which  to  live.  The 
home  circle  was  composed  of  Swinburne,  Watts- 
Dun  ton,  his  two  sisters,  Miss  Watts  and  Mrs. 
Mason.  To  these  must  be  added  Mr.  Thomas 
Hake,  for  many  years  Watts-Dunton 's  friend 
and  secretary,  who  was  in  daily  attendance. 
Later  the  circle  was  enlarged  by  the  entry  into 
it  of  the  young  and  accomplished  bride,  the 
present  Mrs.  Watts-Dunton. 

'  The  Pines  "  would  have  seemed  a  strange 
place  without  "  the  Colonel,"  as  Watts-Dunton 
always  called  Mr.  Hake,  adopting  a  family 
name  given  to  him  when  a  boy  on  account  of 
his  likeness  to  his  cousin,  General,  then  Colonel, 
Gordon.  Nothing  amused  Watts-Dunton  more 
than  for  some  caller  to  start  discussing 
army  matters  with  the  supposed  ex-officer. 
He  would  watch  with  a  mischievous  glee  Mr. 
Hake's  endeavours  to  carry  on  a  conversation 


12 

in  which  he  had  no  special  interest.  Watts- 
Dunton  never  informed  callers  of  their  mistake, 
and  to  this  day  there  is  one  friend  of  twenty- 
five  years'  standing,  a  man  keenly  interested  in 
National  Defence,  who  regards  Mr.  Hake  as  an 
authority  upon  army  matters. 

"  No  living  man  knew  Borrow  so  well  as 
Thomas  Hake,"  Watts-Dunton  once  remarked 
to  a  friend.  To  the  young  Hakes  Lavengro 
was  a  great  joy,  and  they  would  often  accom- 
pany him  part  of  his  way  home  from  Coombe 
End.  On  one  occasion  Borrow  said  to  the 
youngest  boy,  "  Do  you  know  how  to  fight  a 
man  bigger  than  yourself  ?  "  The  lad  con- 
fessed that  he  did  not.  "  Well,"  said  Borrow, 
"  You  challenge  him  to  fight,  and  when  he  is 
taking  off  his  coat,  you  hit  him  in  the  stomach 
as  hard  as  you  can  and  run  for  your  life." 

Swinburne  and  Watts-Dunton  had  first  met 
in  1872.  In  1879  they  went  to  live  together 
at  "  The  Pines,"  and  from  that  date  were  never 
parted  until  Swinburne's  death  thirty  years' 
later.  In  no  literary  friendship  has  the  bond 
been  closer.  Watts-Dunton's  first  act  each 
morning  was  to  visit  Swinburne  in  his  own 
room,  where  the  poet  breakfasted  alone  with 
the  morning  newspapers.  During  the  morning 
the  two  would  take  their  daily  walk  together, 
a  practice  continued  for  many  years.  '  There 
is  no  time  like  the  morning  for  a  walk,"  Swin- 
burne would  say,  "  The  sparkle,  the  exhilara- 


INTRODUCTION  13 

tion  of  it.  I  walk  every  morning  of  my  life, 
no  matter  what  the  weather,  pelting  along  all 
the  time  as  fast  as  I  can  go."  His  perfect 
health  he  attributed  entirely  to  this  habit. 

In  later  years  he  would  take  his  walks  alone. 
It  was  during  one  of  these  that  he  met  with 
an  adventure  that  seemed  to  cause  him  some 
irritation.  A  young  artist  hearing  that  "  the 
master  "  walked  each  day  up  Putney  Hill  lay 
in  wait  for  him.  After  several  unsuccessful 
ventures  he  at  length  saw  a  figure  approaching 
which  he  instantly  recognized.  Crossing  the 
road  the  youth  went  boldly  up  and  said  : — 

"  If  you  are  Mr.  Swinburne,  may  I  shake 
hands  with  you  ?  ' 

"  Eh  ?  "  remarked  the  astonished  poet. 

The  young  man  repeated  his  request  in  a 
louder  voice,  remembering  Swinburne's  deaf- 
ness, adding : — 

"It  is  my  ambition  to  shake  hands  with 
you,  sir." 

"  Oh !  very  well,"  was  the  response,  as 
Swinburne  half-heartedly  extended  his  hand, 
"  I'm  not  accustomed  to  this  sort  of  thing." 

Meal  times  at  "  The  Pines  "  were  occasions 
when  there  was  much  talk  and  laughter ;  for 
in  both  Swinburne  and  Watts-Dunton  the 
mischievous  spirit  of  boyhood  had  not  been 
entirely  disciplined  by  life,  and  in  the  other 
members  of  the  household  the  same  un- 
conquerable spirit  of  youth  was  jnanifest. 


I4  INTRODUCTION 

Sometimes  there  were  great  discussions  and 
arguments.  Watts-Dunton  had  more  than  a 
passing  interest  in  science,  whereas,  to  Swin- 
burne it  was  anathema,  although  his  father 
was  strongly  scientific  in  his  learning.  The 
libraries  of  the  two  men  clearly  showed  how 
different  were  their  tastes ;  for  that  of  Watts- 
Dunton  was  all-embracing,  Swinburne's  was 
as  exclusive  as  his  circle  of  personal  friends. 
The  one  was  the  library  of  a  critic,  the  other 
that  of  a  poet. 

Swinburne  enjoyed  nothing  better  than  a 
discussion,  and  he  was  a  foe  who  wielded  a 
stout  blade.  He  fought,  however,  with  scrupu- 
lous fairness,  never  interrupting  an  adversary  ; 
but  listening  to  him  with  a  deliberate  patience 
that  was  almost  disconcerting.  Then  when 
his  turn  came  he  would  overwhelm  his  opponent 
and  destroy  his  most  weighty  arguments  in 
what  a  friend  once  described  as  "  a  lava  torrent 
of  burning  words.'*  He  possessed  many  of 
the  qualities  necessary  to  debate :  concentra- 
tion, the  power  of  pouncing  upon  the  weak  spot 
in  his  adversary's  argument,  and  above  all  a 
wonderful  memory.  What  he  lacked  was  that 
calm  and  calculating  frigidity  so  necessary  to 
the  successful  debater.  Instead  of  freezing 
his  opponent  to  silence  with  deliberate  logic, 
he  would  strive  rather  by  the  tempestuous 
quality  of  his  rhetoric  to  hurl  him  into  the  next 
parish. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

There  were  times  when  he  would  work  him- 
self up  into  a  passion  of  denunciation,  when, 
trembling  and  quivering  in  every  limb,  he 
would  in  a  fine  frenzy  of  scorn  annihilate  those 
whom  he  conceived  to  be  his  enemies,  and  in 
scathing  periods  pour  ridicule  upon  their  works. 
But  if  he  were  merciless  in  his  onslaughts  upon 
his  foes,  he  was  correspondingly  loyal  in  the 
defence  of  his  friends.  He  seemed  as  incapable 
of  seeing  the  weakness  of  a  friend  as  of  appreciat- 
ing the  strength  of  an  enemy. 

The  things  and  the  people  who  did  not  interest 
him  he  had  the  fortunate  capacity  of  entirely 
forgetting.  A  friend*  tells  of  how  on  one  occa- 
sion he  happened  to  mention  in  the  course  of 
conversation  a  book  by  a  certain  author  whom 
he  knew  had  been  a  visitor  at  "  The  Pines  " 
on  several  occasions,  and  as  such  was  personally 
known  to  Swinburne. 

"  Oh  !  really,"  Swinburne  remarked,  "  Yes, 
now  that  you  mention  it,  I  believe  someone 
of  that  name  has  been  so  good  as  to  come  and 
see  us.  I  seem  to  recall  him,  and  I  seem  to 
remember  hearing  someone  say  that  he  had 
written  something,  though  I  don't  remember 
exactly  what.  So  he  has  published  a  book  upon 
the  subject  of  which  we  are  talking.  Really  ? 
I  did  not  know." 

All  this  was  said  with  perfect  courtesy  and 

*  Mr.  Coulson  Kernahan. 


16  INTRODUCTION 

without  the  least  intention  of  administering  a 
snub  or  belittling  the  writer  in  question.  Swin- 
burne had  merely  forgotten  because  there  was 
nothing  in  that  author's  personality  that  had 
impressed  itself  upon  him.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  would  remember  the  minutest 
details  of  conversations  in  which  he  had  been 
interested. 

In  spite  of  his  capacity  for  passionate  out- 
bursts and  inspired  invective,  Swinburne  was  a 
most  attentive  listener,  provided  there  were 
things  being  said  to  which  it  was  worth  listen- 
ing. At  meal  times  when  his  attention  became 
engaged  he  would  forget  everything  but  the 
conversation.  Indifferent  as  to  what  stage  of 
the  meal  he  was  at,  he  would  turn  to  whoever 
it  might  be  that  had  introduced  the  subject, 
and  would  talk  or  listen  oblivious  of  the  fact 
that  food  might  be  spoiling.  Fortunately,  he 
was  a  small  eater. 

On  one  occasion  when  lunching  at  "  The 
Pines"  Mr.  Coulson  Kernahan  happened  to 
remark  that  he  had  in  his  pocket  a  copy  of 
Christina  Rossetti's  then  unpublished  poem, 
'  The  Death  of  a  First-born,'  written  in  memory 
of  the  Duke  of  Clarence.  Down  went  knife 
and  fork  as  Swinburne  half  rose  from  his  chair 
to  reach  across  the  table  for  the  manuscript. 
"  She  is  as  a  god  to  mortals  when  compared  to 
most  other  living  women  poets,"  he  exclaimed. 
Then,  in  his  thin-high-pitched,  but  exquisitely 


INTRODUCTION  17 

modulated  voice   he  half  read,  half  chanted, 
two   stanzas   of  the  poem. 

One  young  life  lost,  two  happy  young  lives  blighted 

With  earthward  eyes  we  see  : 
With  eyes  uplifted,  keener,  farther  sighted 

We  look,  O  Lord  to  thee. 

Grief  hears  a  funeral  knell :  hope  hears  the  ringing 

Of  birthday  bells  on  high. 
Faith,  Hope  and  Love  make  answer  with  soft  singing, 

Half  carol  and  half  cry. 

He  stopped  abruptly  refusing  to  read  the 
third  and  last  stanza  because  it  was  unequal, 
and  the  poem  was  stronger  and  finer  by  its 
omission.  Then  he  said  in  a  hushed  voice, 
"  For  the  happy  folk  who  are  able  to  think  as 
she  thinks,  who  believe  as  she  believes,  the 
poem  is  of  its  kind  perfect." 

With  glowing  eyes  and  with  hand  that  marked 
time  to  the  music,  he  read  once  more  the  second 
verse,  repeating  the  line,  "  half  carol  and  half 
cry  "  three  times,  lowering  his  voice  with  each 
repetition  until  it  became  little  more  than  a 
whisper.  Laying  the  manuscript  reverently 
beside  him,  he  sat  perfectly  still  for  a  space  with 
brooding  eyes,  then  rising  silently  left  the  room 
with  short  swift  strides.* 

Many  of  Swinburne's  friends  have  testified 
to  his  personal  charm  and  "courtliness  of  bear- 
ing. '  Unmistakably  an  aristocrat,  and  with 

*  The  writer  is  much  indebted  to  Mr.  Coulson  Kerna- 
han  for  this  story  and  much  other  information  of  life  at 
"The  Pines." 


18  INTRODUCTION 

all  the  ease  and  polish  which  one  associates 
with  high  breeding,  there  was,  even  in  the 
cordiality  with  which  he  would  rise  and  come 
forward  to  welcome  a  visitor  a  suspicion  of  the 
shy  nervousness  of  the  introspective  man  and 
of  the  recluse  on  first  facing  a  stranger."  Mr. 
Coulson  Kernahan  has  said,  "  I  have  seen  him 
angry,  I  have  heard  him  furiously  dissent  from, 
and  even  denounce  the  views  put  forward  by 
others,  but  never  once  was  what,  for  want  of  a 
better  word,  I  must  call  his  personal  deference 
to  those  others  relaxed. 

"  To  no  one  would  he  defer  quite  so  graciously 
and  readily,  to  no  one  was  he  so  scrupulously 
courtly  in  bearing  as  to  those  who  constituted 
his  own  household." 

If  he  felt  that  he  had  monopolized  the  con- 
versation he  would  turn  to  Watts-Dunton  and 
apologize,  and  for  a  time  become  transformed 
into  an  attentive  listener. 

Lord  Ronald  Gower  writes  of  Swinburne's 
remarkable  powers  as  a  talker.  Telling  of  a 
luncheon  at  "  The  Pines  "  in  1879,  he  writes  : — 
"  Swinburne's  talk  after  luncheon  was 
wonderful. . .  .What,  far  beyond  the  wonderful 
flow  of  words  of  the  poet,  struck  me,  was  his 
real  diffidence  and  modesty ;  while  fully  aware 
of  the  divine  gifts  within  him,  he  is  as  simple 
and  unaffected  as  a  child."* 

But  conversation  at  "  The  Pines  "  was  not 
*  'My  Reminiscences/  by  Lord  Ronald  Gower. 


T 1 1 EO I  )0  R  E    WATTS  -DUN  TON 


INTRODUCTION  19 

always  of  the  serious  things  of  life.  It  very 
frequently  partook  of  the  playful,  when  the 
hearers  would  be  kept  amused  with  a  humour 
and  whimsicality,  cauterized  now  and  then 
with  some  biting  touch  of  satire  which  showed 
that  neither  Swinburne  nor  Watts-Dunton  had 
entirely  grown  up. 

Reading  aloud  was  also  a  greatly  favoured 
form  of  entertainment.  Swinburne  was  a  sym- 
pathetic reader,  possessed  of  a  voice  of  remark- 
able quality  and  power  of  expression,  and  he 
would  read  for  the  hour  together  from  Dickens, 
Lamb,  Charles  Reade,  and  Thackeray.  To  Mrs. 
Mason's  little  boy  he  was  a  wizard  who  could 
open  many  magic  casements.  He  would  carry 
off  the  lad  to  his  own  room,  and  there  read  to 
him  the  stories  which  caused  the  hour  of  bed- 
time to  be  dreaded.  When  the  nurse  arrived 
to  fetch  the  child  to  bed  he  would  imperiously 
wave  her  away,  hoping  that  Swinburne  would 
not  notice  the  action  and  so  bring  the  evening's 
entertainment  to  a  close.  On  one  occasion  the 
child  stole  down  to  Swinburne's  room  after  he 
had  been  safely  put  to  bed,  where  the  interrupted 
story  was  renewed.  When  eventually  dis- 
covered both  seemed  to  regard  the  incident  as 
a  huge  joke,  and  Swinburne  carried  the  child 
to  the  nursery  and  tucked  him  up  for  the 
night. 

A  great  capacity  for  friendship  involves  an 
equally  great  meed  of  sorrow.  At  last  the 


20  INTRODUCTION 

hour  arrived  when  the  friend  who  was  nearer 
to  him  than  a  brother  followed  those  who 
one  by  one  he  had  mourned,  and  of  the  old 
familiar  faces  there  were  left  to  him  only 
the  two  sisters,  whose  love  and  devotion  had 
contributed  so  much  to  his  domestic  happiness, 
and  his  friend,  Mr.  Thomas  Hake,  who  for 
seventeen  years  had  acted  as  confidential  secre- 
tary. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE. 

INTRODUCTION 5 

I.  GEORGE  BORROW          ..         ..  25 

II.  DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI      ..  69 

III.  ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON       ..  120 

IV.  CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI  177 
V.  DR.  GORDON  HAKE      ..        ...  207 

VI.  JOHN      LEICESTER      WARREN, 

LORD  DE  TABLE Y  . .         . .  219 

VII.  WILLIAM  MORRIS          ..        ..  240 

VIII.  FRANCIS  HINDES  GROOME       ..  277 


21 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

MRS.  WILLIAM  MORRIS  . .    Frontispiece 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE         . .      to  face  page      8 


THEODORE  WATTS-DUNTON       „        „        18 


DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI        ,,  ,,  70 

ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON,  ^T,  80  ,,  120 

CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI     . .          „  „  178 

MRS.  ROSSETTI    . .        . .  „  „  182 

DR.  GORDON  HAKE      . .          „  „  208 

WILLIAM  MORRIS          . .  „  „  240 

FRANCIS  HINDES  GROOME  „  „  278 


I. 

GEORGE   BORROW. 

1803-1881. 
i. 

I  HAVE  been  reading  those  charming  remi- 
niscences of  George  Borrow  which  appeared 
in  The  Athen&um.*  I  have  been  reading 
them,  I  may  add,  under  the  happiest  conditions 
for  enjoying  them  —  amid  the  self -same 
heather  and  bracken  where  I  have  so  often 
listened  to  Lavengro's  quaint  talk  of  all  the 
wondrous  things  he  saw  and  heard  in  his  won- 
drous life.  So  graphically  has  Mr.  Hake  de- 
picted him,  that  as  I  walked  and  read  his  paper 
I  seemed  to  hear  the  fine  East-Anglian  accent 
of  the  well-remembered  voice — I  seemed  to  see 
the  mighty  figure,  strengthened  by  the  years 
rather  than  stricken  by  them,  striding  along 
between  the  whin  bushes  or  through  the  quags, 
now  stooping  over  the  water  to  pluck  the  wild 
mint  he  loved,  whose  lilac-coloured  blossoms 
perfumed  the  air  as  he  crushed  them,  now 
stopping  to  watch  the  water-wagtail  by  the 
ponds  as  he  descanted  upon  the  powers  of  that 
enchanted  bird — powers,  like  many  human 
endowments,  more  glorious  than  pleasant,  if 
it  is  sober  truth,  as  Borrow  would  gravely  tell, 
that  the  gipsy  lad  who  knocks  a  water-wagtail 

*  Of  August  13,  1 88 1.     By  Mr.  A.  Egrnont  Hake. 
25 


26  OLD   FAMILIAR  FACES 

on  the  head  with  a  stone  gains  for  a  bride  a 
"  ladye  from  a  far  countrie/'  and  dazzles  with 
his  good  luck  all  the  other  black-eyed  young 
urchins  of  the  dingle. 

Though  my  own  intimacy  with  Borrow  did 
not  begin  till  he  was  considerably  advanced  in 
years,  and  ended  on  his  finally  quitting  London 
for  Oulton,  there  were  circumstances  in  our 
intercourse — circumstances,  I  mean,  connected 
partly  with  temperament  and  partly  with 
mutual  experience — which  make  me  doubt 
whether  any  one  understood  him  better  than 
I  did,  or  broke  more  thoroughly  through  that 
exclusiveness  of  temper  which  isolated  him 
from  all  but  a  few.  However,  be  this  as  it 
may,  no  one  at  least  realized  more  fully  than 
I  how  lovable  was  his  nature,  with  all  his  angu- 
larities— how  simple  and  courageous,  how  manly 
and  noble.  His  shyness,  his  apparent  coldness, 
his  crotchety  obstinacy,  repelled  people,  and 
consequently  those  who  at  any  time  during  his 
life  really  understood  him  must  have  been  very 
few.  How  was  it,  then,  that  such  a  man 
wandered  about  over  Europe  and  fraternized 
so  completely  with  a  race  so  suspicious  and 
intractable  as  the  gipsies  ?  A  natural  enough 
question,  which  I  have  often  been  asked,  and 
this  is  my  reply  : — 

Those  who  know  the  gipsies  will  understand 
me  when  I  say  that  this  suspicious  and  wary 
race  of  wanderers — suspicious  and  wary  from 


GEORGE  BORROW  27 

an  instinct  transmitted  through  ages  of  dire 
persecutions  from  the  Children  of  the  Roof — 
will  readily  fraternize  with  a  blunt,  single- 
minded,  and  shy  eccentric  like  Borrow,  while 
perhaps  the  skilful  man  of  the  world  may  find 
all  his  tact  and  savoir  faire  useless  and,  indeed, 
in  the  way.  And  the  reason  of  this  is  not  far 
to  seek,  perhaps.  What  a  gipsy  most  dislikes 
is  the  feeling  that  his  "  gorgio  "  interlocutor  is 
thinking  about  him  ;  for,  alas  !  to  be  the  object 
of  "  gorgio  "  thoughts — has  it  not  been  a  most 
dangerous  and  mischievous  honour  to  every 
gipsy  since  first  his  mysterious  race  was  driven 
to  accept  the  grudging  hospitality  of  the  Western 
world  ?  A  gipsy  hates  to  be  watched,  and 
knows  at  once  when  he  is  being  watched ;  for 
in  tremulous  delicacy  of  apprehension  his 
organization  is  far  beyond  that  of  an  English- 
man, or,  indeed,  of  any  member  of  any  of  the 
thick-fingered  races  of  Europe.  One  of  the 
results  of  this  excessive  delicacy  is  that  a 
gipsy  can  always  tell  to  a  surety  whether  a 
"  gorgio  "  companion  is  thinking  about  him, 
or  whether  the  "  gorgio's  "  thoughts  are  really 
and  genuinely  occupied  with  the  fishing  rod, 
the  net,  the  gin,  the  gun,  or  whatsoever  may 
be  the  common  source  of  interest  that  has 
drawn  them  together. 

Now,  George  Borrow,  after  the  first  one  or 
two  awkward  interviews  were  well  over,  would 
lapse  into  a  kind  of  unconscious  ruminating 


28  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

bluntness,  a  pronounced  and  angular  self- 
dependence,  which  might  well  disarm  the 
suspiciousness  of  the  most  wary  gipsy,  from 
the  simple  fact  that  it  was  genuine.  Hence, 
as  I  say,  among  the  few  who  understood 
Borrow  his  gipsy  friends  very  likely  stood 
first — outside,  of  course,  his  family  circle.  And 
surely  this  is  an  honour  to  Borrow ;  for  the 
gipsies,  notwithstanding  certain  undeniable  obli- 
quities in  matters  of  morals  and  cusine,  are  the 
only  people  left  in  the  island  who  are  still  free 
from  British  vulgarity  (perhaps  because  they 
are  not  British).  It  is  no  less  an  honour  to 
them,  for  while  he  lived  the  island  did  not 
contain  a  nobler  English  gentleman  than  him 
they  called  the  "  Romany  Rye." 

Borrow's  descriptions  of  gipsy  life  are,  no 
doubt,  too  deeply  charged  with  the  rich  lights 
shed  from  his  own  personality  entirely  to 
satisfy  a  more  matter-of-fact  observer,  and  I 
am  not  going  to  say  that  he  is  anything  like 
so  photographic  as  F.H.  Groome,  for  instance,  or 
so  trustworthy.  But  then  it  should  never  be 
forgotten  that  Borrow  was,  before  everything 
else,  a  poet.  If  this  statement  should  be 
challenged  by  "  the  present  time,"  let  me  tell 
the  present  time  that  by  poet  I  do  not  mean 
merely  a  man  who  is  skilled  in  writing  lyrics 
and  sonnets  and  that  kind  of  thing,  but  pri- 
marily a  man  who  has  the  poetic  gift  of  seeing 
through  "  the  shows  of  things  "  and  knowing 


GEORGE    BORROW  29 

where  he  is — the  gift  of  drinking  deeply  of  the 
waters  of  life  and  of  feeling  grateful  to  Nature 
for  so  sweet  a  draught ;  a  man  who,  while 
acutely  feeling  the  ineffable  pathos  of  human 
life,  can  also  feel  how  sweet  a  thing  it  is  to  live, 
having  so  great  and  rich  a  queen  as  Nature 
for  his  mother,  and  for  companions  any  number 
of  such  amusing  creatures  as  men  and  women. 
In  this  sense  I  cannot  but  set  Borrow,  with  his 
love  of  nature  and  his  love  of  adventure,  very 
high  among  poets — as  high,  perhaps,  as  I  place 
another  dweller  in  tents,  Sylvester  Boswell  him- 
self, "  the  well-known  and  popalated  gipsy  of 
Codling  Gap,"  who,  like  Borrow,  is  famous  for 
"  his  great  knowledge  in  grammaring  one  of 
the  ancientist  langeges  on  record,"  and  whose 
touching  preference  of  a  gipsy  tent  to  a  roof, 
"  on  the  accont  of  health,  sweetness  of  the  air, 
and  for  enjoying  the  pleasure  of  Nature's  life," 
is  expressed  with  a  poetical  feeling  such  as 
Chaucer  might  have  known  had  he  not,  as  a 
court  poet,  been  too  genteel.  "  Enjoying  the 
pleasure  of  Nature's  life  I'1  That  is  what 
Borrow  did ;  and  how  few  there  are  that 
understand  it. 

The  self-consciousness  which  in  the  presence 
of  man  produces  that  kind  of  shyness  which  was 
Borrow's  characteristic  left  him  at  once  when 
he  was  with  Nature  alone  or  in  the  company 
of  an  intimate  friend.  At  her,  no  man's  gaze 
was  more  frank  and  childlike  than  his.  Hence 


30  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

the  charm  of  his  books.  No  man's  writing  can 
take  you  into  the  country  as  Borrow's  can  :  it 
makes  you  feel  the  sunshine,  see  the  meadows, 
smell  the  flowers,  hear  the  skylark  sing  and  the 
grasshopper  chirrup.  Who  else  can  do  it  ?  I 
know  of  none.  And  as  to  personal  intercourse 
with  him,  if  I  were  asked  what  was  the  chief 
delight  of  this,  I  should  say  that  it  was  the 
delight  of  bracingness.  A  walking  tour  with  a 
self-conscious  lover  of  the  picturesque — an  "  in- 
terviewer "  of  Nature  with  a  note-book — worry- 
ing you  to  admire  him  for  admiring  Nature  so 
much,  is  one  of  those  occasional  calamities  of 
life  which  a  gentleman  and  a  Christian  must 
sometimes  heroically  bear,  but  the  very  thought 
of  which  will  paralyze  with  fear  the  sturdiest 
Nature-worshipper,  whom  no  crevasse  or  ava- 
lanche or  treacherous  mist  can  appal.  But  a 
walk  and  talk  with  Borrow  as  he  strode  through 
the  bracken  on  an  autumn  morning  had  the 
exhilarating  effect  upon  his  companion  of  a 
draught  of  the  brightest  mountain  air.  And 
this  was  the  result  not,  assuredly,  of  any 
exuberance  of  animal  spirits  (Borrow,  indeed, 
was  subject  to  fits  of  serious  depression),  but 
rather  of  a  feeling  he  induced  that  between 
himself  and  all  nature,  from  the  clouds  floating 
lazily  over  head  to  the  scented  heather,  crisp 
and  purple,  under  foot,  there  was  an  entire 
fitness  and  harmony — a  sort  of  mutual  under- 
standing, indeed.  There  was,  I  say,  something 


GEORGE   BORROW  31 

bracing  in  the  very  look  of  this  silvery-haired 
giant  as  he  strode  along  with  a  kind  of  easy 
sloping  movement,  like  that  of  a  St.  Bernard 
dog  (the  most  deceptive  of  all  movements  as 
regards  pace),  his  beardless  face  (quite  match- 
less for  symmetrical  beauty)  beaded  with  the 
healthy  perspiration  drops  of  strong  exercise, 
and  glowing  and  rosy  in  the  sun. 

As  a  vigorous  old  man  Borrow  never  had  an 
equal,  I  think.  There  has  been  much  talk  of 
the  vigour  of  Shelley's  friend,  E.  J.  Trelawny. 
I  knew  that  splendid  old  corsair,  and  admired 
his  agility  of  limb  and  brain ;  but  at  seventy 
Borrow  could  have  walked  off  with  Trelawny 
under  his  arm.  At  seventy  years  of  age,  after 
breakfasting  at  eight  o'clock  in  Hereford  Square, 
he  would  walk  to  Putney,  meet  one  or  more  of 
us  at  Roehampton,  roam  about  Wimbledon  and 
Richmond  Park  with  us,  bathe  in  the  Fen 
Ponds  with  a  north-east  wind  cutting  across 
the  icy  water  like  a  razor,  run  about  the  grass 
afterwards  like  a  boy  to  shake  off  some  of  the 
water-drops,  stride  about  the  park  for  hours, 
and  then,  after  fasting  for  twelve  hours,  eat  a 
dinner  at  Roehampton  that  would  have  done 
Sir  Walter  Scott's  eyes  good  to  see.  Finally, 
he  would  walk  back  to  Hereford  Square,  getting 
home  late  at  night. 

And  if  the  physique  of  the  man  was  bracing, 
his  conversation,  unless  he  happened  to  be 
suffering  from  one  of  his  occasional  fits  of  de. 


32  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

pression,  was  still  more  so.  Its  freshness, 
raciness,  and  eccentric  whim  no  pen  could  de- 
scribe. There  is  a  kind  of  humour  the  delight 
of  which  is  that  while  you  smile  at  the  pictures 
it  draws,  you  smile  quite  as  much  or  more  to 
think  that  there  is  a  mind  so  whimsical, 
crotchety,  and  odd  as  to  draw  them.  This 
was  the  humour  of  Borrow.  His  command  of 
facial  expression — though  he  seemed  to  exer- 
cise it  almost  involuntarily  and  unconsciously 
— had,  no  doubt,  much  to  do  with  this  charm. 
Once,  when  he  was  talking  to  me  about 
the  men  of  Charles  Lamb's  day — The  London 
Magazine  set — I  asked  him  what  kind  of  a 
man  was  the  notorious  and  infamous  Griffiths 
Wainewright.*  In  a  moment  Sorrow's  face 
changed :  his  mouth  broke  into  a  Carker- 
like  smile,  his  eyes  became  elongated  to  an 
expression  that  was  at  once  fawning  and 
sinister,  as  he  said,  "  Wainewright !  He  used 
to  sit  in  an  armchair  close  to  the  fire  and 
smile  all  the  evening  like  this."  He  made  me 
see  Wainewright  and  hear  his  voice  as  plainly 
as  though  I  had  seen  him  and  heard  him  in  the 
publishers'  parlour. 

His  vocabulary,  rich  in  picturesque  words 
of  the  high  road  and  dingle,  his  quaint  coun- 
trified phrases,  might  also  have  added  to  the 

*  Thomas  Griffiths  Wainewright,  art-critic,  who  poisoned 
a  number  of  his  relatives  for  their  money,  a  contributor  to 
The  Londm  Magazine  and  exhibitor  at  the  Royal  Academy. 
He  died  a  convict  in  Tasmania  in  1852. 


GEORGE   BORROW  33 

effect  of  this  kind  of  eccentric  humour.  "  A 
duncie  book — of  course  it's  duncie — it's  only 
duncie  books  that  sell  nowadays,"  he  would 
shout  when  some  new  "  immortal  poem  "  or 
"  greatest  work  of  the  age  "  was  mentioned. 
Tennyson,  I  fear,  was  the  representative 
duncie  poet  of  the  time  ;  but  that  was  because 
nothing  could  ever  make  Borrow  realize  the 
fact  that  Tennyson  was  not  the  latest  juvenile 
representative  of  a  "  duncie  "  age ;  for 
although,  according  to  Leland,*  the  author 
of  '  Sordello  '  is  (as  is  natural,  perhaps)  the  only 
bard  known  in  the  gipsy  tent,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  even  his  name  was  more  than  a  name 
to  Borrow ;  indeed,  I  think  that  people  who 
had  no  knowledge  of  Romany,  Welsh,  and 
Armenian  were  all  more  or  less  "  duncie."  As 
a  trap  to  catch  the  "  foaming  vipers,"  his 
critics,  he  in  '  Lavengro '  purposely  misspelt 
certain  Armenian  and  Welsh  words,  just  to 
have  the  triumph  of  saying  in  another  volume 
that  they  who  had  attacked  him  on  so  many 
points  had  failed  to  discover  that  he  had 
wrongly  given  "  zhats  "  as  the  nominative  of 
the  Armenian  noun  for  bread,  while  everybody 
in  England,  especially  every  critic,  ought  to 
know  that  "  zhats  "  is  the  accusative  form. 
I  will  try,  however,  to  give  the  reader  an 

*  C.  G.  Leland  ("  Hans  Breitmann  "),  on  whom  Borrow's 
books  had  "an  incredible  influence,"  and  caused  him  to  take 
up  the  study  of  things  Romany. 

D 


34  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

idea  of  the  whim  of  Borrow's  conversation,  by 
giving  it  in  something  like  a  dramatic  form. 
Let  the  reader  suppose  himself  on  a  summer's 
evening  at  that  delightful  old  roadside  inn  the 
Bald-Faced  Stag,  in  the  Roehampton  Valley, 
near  Richmond  Park,  where  are  sitting,  over 
a  "  cup  "  (to  use  Borrow's  word)  of  foaming 
ale,  Lavengro  himself,  one  of  his  oldest 
friends,  and  a  new  acquaintance,  a  certain 
student  of  things  in  general  lately  introduced 
to  Borrow  and  nearly,  but  not  quite,  admitted 
behind  the  hedge  of  Borrow's  shyness,  as 
may  be  seen  by  the  initiated  from  a  certain 
rather  constrained,  half-resentful  expression  on 
his  face.  Jerry  Abershaw's*  sword  (the  chief 
trophy  of  mine  host)  has  been  introduced,  and 
Borrow's  old  friend  has  been  craftily  endea- 
vouring to  turn  the  conversation  upon  that 
ever  fresh  and  fruitful  topic,  but  in  vain. 
Suddenly  the  song  of  a  nightingale,  perched  on 
a  tree  not  far  off,  rings  pleasantly  through  the 
open  window  and  fills  the  room  with  a  new 
atmosphere  of  poetry  and  romance.  "  That 
nightingale  has  as  fine  a  voice,"  says  Borrow, 
"  as  though  he  were  born  and  bred  in  the 
Eastern  Counties."  Borrow  is  proud  of  being 

*  Louis  Jeremiah  Abershaw,  better  known  as  Jerry 
Abershaw,  I773?-I795,  a  notorious  highwayman,  who  was 
the  terror  of  the  roads  from  London  to  Wimbledon  and 
Kingston.  Borrow  with  characteristic  perversity  persisted 
in  regarding  the  redoubtable  Jerry  as  a  hero,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  he  justly  met  his  death  on  the  gallows. 


GEORGE   BORROW  35 

an  East- Anglian,  of  which  the  student  has 
already  been  made  aware  and  which  he  now 
turns  to  good  account  in  the  important  business 
he  has  set  himself,  of  melting  Lavengro's  frost 
and  being  admitted  a  member  of  the  Open-Air 
Club.  "  Ah  !  "  says  the  wily  student,  "  I  know 
the  Eastern  Counties ;  no  nightingales  like 
those,  especially  Norfolk  nightingales."  Bor- 
row's face  begins  to  brighten  slightly,  but  still 
he  does  not  direct  his  attention  to  the  stranger, 
who  proceeds  to  remark  that  although  the 
southern  counties  are  so  much  warmer  than 
Norfolk,  some  of  them,  such  as  Cornwall  and 
Devon,  are  without  nightingales.  Borrow's  face 
begins  to  get  brighter  still,  and  he  looks  out  of 
the  window  with  a  smile,  as  though  he  were 
being  suddenly  carried  back  to  the  green  lanes 
of  his  beloved  Norfolk. 

"  From  which  well-known  fact  of  ornith- 
ology," continues  the  student,  "  I  am  driven  to 
infer  that  in  their  choice  of  habitat  nightingales 
are  guided  not  so  much  by  considerations  of 
latitude  as  of  good  taste."  Borrow's  anger  is 
evidently  melting  away.  The  talk  runs  still 
upon  nightingales,  and  the  student  mentions 
the  attempt  to  settle  them  in  Scotland  once 
made  by  Sir  John  Sinclair,  who  introduced 
nightingales'  eggs  from  England  into  robins' 
nests  in  Scotland,  in  the  hope  that  the  young 
nightingales,  after  enjoying  a  Scotch  summer, 
would  return  to  the  place  of  their  birth,  after 


36  OLD    FAMILIAR    FACES 

the  custom  of  English  nightingales.  "  And 
did  they  return  ?  "  says  Borrow,  with  as  much 
interest  as  if  the  honour  of  his  country  were 
involved  in  the  question.  "  Return  to  Scot- 
land ?  "  says  the  student  quietly  ;  "  the  entire 
animal  kingdom  are  agreed,  you  know,  in  never 
returning  to  Scotland.  Besides,  the  nightin- 
gales' eggs  in  question  were  laid  in  Norfolk." 
Conquered  at  last,  Borrow  extends  the  hand 
of  brotherhood  to  the  impudent  student  (whose 
own  private  opinion,  no  doubt,  is  that  Norfolk 
is  more  successful  in  producing  Nelsons  than 
nightingales),  and  proceeds  without  more  ado 
to  tell  how  "  poor  Jerry  Abershaw/'  on  being 
captured  by  the  Bow  Street  runners,  had  left 
his  good  sword  behind  him  as  a  memento  of 
highway  glories  soon  to  be  ended  on  the  gallows 
tree.  (By-the-bye,  I  wonder  where  that  sword 
is  now ;  it  was  bought  by  Mr.  Adolphus  Levy, 
of  Alton  Lodge,  at  the  closing  of  the  Bald- 
Faced  Stag.) 

From  Jerry  Abershaw  Borrow  gets  upon  other 
equally  interesting  topics,  such  as  the  decadence 
of  beer  and  pugilism,  and  the  nobility  of  the 
now  neglected  British  bruiser,  as  exampled 
especially  in  the  case  of  the  noble  Pearce,  who 
lost  his  life  through  rushing  up  a  staircase  and 
rescuing  a  woman  from  a  burning  house  after 
having  on  a  previous  occasion  rescued  another 
woman  by  blacking  the  eyes  of  six  gamekeepers, 
who  had  been  set  upon  her  by  some  noble  lord 


GEORGE   BORROW  37 

or  another.  Then,  while  the  ale  sparkles  with 
a  richer  colour  as  the  evening  lights  grow  deeper, 
the  talk  gets  naturally  upon  "  lords  "  in  general, 
gentility  nonsense,  and  "  hoity-toityism  "  as 
the  canker  at  the  heart  of  modern  civilization. 


II. 

ORROW   could   look  at   Nature  without 
thinking    of    himself — a    rare    gift,    for 
Nature,  as  I  have  said,  has  been  dis- 
appointed  in  man*.      Her    great    desire   from 
the  first  has    been   to   grow   an   organism    so 
conscious  that  it   can   turn   round   and  look 
at  her  with   intelligent  eyes.      She  has  done 
so  at  last,  but  the  consciousness  is  so  high  as 
to  be  self-conscious,  and  man  cannot  for  egotism 
look  at  his  mother  after  all.     Borrow  was  a 
great   exception.    Thoreau's   self-consciousness 
showed  itself  in  presence  of  Nature,  Sorrow's  in 
presence  of  man.    The  very  basis  of  Sorrow's 
nature  was  reverence.     His  unswerving  belief 
in  the  beneficence  of  God  was  most  beautiful, 
most  touching.     In  his  life  Borrow  had  suffered 
much  :   a  temperament  such  as  his  must  needs 
suffer  much — so  shy  it  was,  so  proud,  and  yet 
yearning   for   a   close   sympathy   such   as   no 
creature   and   only   solitary   communing   with 
Nature  can  give.     Under  any  circumstances,  I 
say,  Borrow  would  have  known  how  sharp  and 
cruel  are  the  flints  along  the  road — how  tender 
are  a  poet's  feet ;   but  his  road  at  one  time  was 
rough  indeed  ;   not  when  he  was  with  his  gipsy 
friends  (for  a  tent  is  freer  than  a  roof,  according 
to  the  grammarian  of  Codling  Gap,  and  roast 
hedgehog  is  the  daintiest  of  viands),  but  when 
he  was  toiling  in  London,  his  fine  gifts  un- 

38 


GEORGE    BORROW  39 

recognized  and  useless — that  was  when  Borrow 
passed  through  the  fire.  Yet  every  sorrow  and 
every  disaster  of  his  life  he  traced  to  the  kindly 
hand  of  a  benevolent  and  wise  Father,  who 
sometimes  will  use  a  whip  of  scorpions,  but 
only  to  chastise  into  a  right  and  happy  course 
the  children  he  loves. 

Apart  from  the  instinctive  rectitude  of  his 
nature,  it  was  with  Borrow  a  deep-rooted  con- 
viction that  sin  never  goes,  and  never  can  go, 
unpunished.  His  doctrine,  indeed,  was  some- 
thing like  the  Buddhist  doctrine  of  Karma — it 
was  based  on  an  instinctive  apprehension  of  the 
sacredness  of  "  law "  in  the  most  universal 
acceptation  of  that  word.  Sylvester  Boswell's 
definition  of  a  free  man,  in  that  fine,  self- 
respective  certificate  of  his,  as  one  who  is  "  free 
from  all  cares  or  fears  of  law  that  may  come 
against  him,"  is,  indeed,  the  gospel  of  every  true 
nature  -  worshipper.  The  moment  Thoreau 
spurned  the  legal  tax-gatherer  the  law  locked 
the  nature- worshipper  in  gaol.  To  enjoy  nature 
the  soul  must  be  free — free  not  only  from  tax- 
gatherers,  but  from  sin  ;  for  every  wrongful 
act  awakes,  out  of  the  mysterious  bosom  of 
Nature  herself,  its  own  peculiar  serpent,  having 
its  own  peculiar  stare,  but  always  hungry  and 
bloody-fanged,  which  follows  the  delinquent's 
feet  whithersoever  they  go,  gliding  through  the 
dewy  grass  on  the  brightest  morning,  dodging 
round  the  trees  on  the  calmest  eve,  wriggling 


40  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

across  the  brook  where  the  wrongdoer  would 
fain  linger  on  the  stepping-stones  to  soothe 
his  soul  with  the  sight  of  the  happy  minnows 
shooting  between  the  water-weeds — following 
him  everywhere,  in  short,  till  at  last,  in  sheer 
desperation,  he  must  needs  stop  and  turn,  and 
bare  his  breast  to  the  fangs  ;  when,  having 
yielded  up  to  the  thing  its  fill  of  atoning  blood, 
Nature  breaks  into  her  old  smile  again,  and  he 
goes  on  his  way  in  peace. 

All  this  Borrow  understood  better  than  any 
man  I  have  ever  met.  Yet  even  into  his 
doctrine  of  Providence  Borrow  imported  such 
an  element  of  whim  that  it  was  impossible  to 
listen  to  him  sometimes  without  a  smile.  For 
instance,  having  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that 
a  certain  lieutenant  had  been  cruelly  ill  used 
by  genteel  magnates  high  in  office,  Borrow 
discovered  that  since  that  iniquity  Providence 
had  frowned  on  the  British  arms,  and  went 
on  to  trace  the  disastrous  blunder  of  Balaklava 
to  this  cause.  Again,  having  decided  that 
Sir  Walter  Scott's  worship  of  gentility  and 
Jacobitism  had  been  the  main  cause  of  the 
revival  of  flunkeyism  and  Popery  in  England, 
Borrow  saw  in  the  dreadful  monetary  disasters 
which  overclouded  Scott's  last  days  the  hand 
of  God,  whose  plan  was  to  deprive  him  of  the 
worldly  position  Scott  worshipped  at  the  very 
moment  when  his  literary  fame  (which  he  mis- 
prized) was  dazzling  the  world. 


GEORGE   BORROW  41 

And  now  as  to  the  gipsy  wanderings.  As  I 
have  said,  no  man  has  been  more  entirely  mis- 
understood than  Borrow.  That  a  man  who 
certainly  did  (as  F.  H.  Groome  says)  look  like 
a  "  colossal  clergyman  "  should  have  joined  the 
gipsies,  that  he  should  have  wandered  over 
England  and  Europe,  content  often  to  have  the 
grass  for  his  bed  and  the  sky  for  his  hostry-roof , 
has  astonished  very  much  (and  I  believe  scan- 
dalized very  much)  this  age.  My  explanation 
of  the  matter  is  this  :  Among  the  myriads  of 
children  born  into  a  world  of  brick  and  mortar 
there  appears  now  and  then  one  who  is  meant 
for  better  things — one  who  exhibits  unmistak- 
able signs  that  he  inherits  the  blood  of  those 
remote  children  of  the  open  air  who,  according 
to  the  old  Sabaean  notion,  on  the  plains  of 
Asia  lived  with  Nature,  loved  Nature  and  were 
loved  by  her,  and  from  whom  all  men  are 
descended.  George  Borrow  was  one  of  those 
who  show  the  olden  strain.  Now,  for  such  a 
man,  born  in  a  country  like  England,  where 
the  modern  fanaticism  of  house-worship  has 
reached  a  condition  which  can  only  be  called 
maniacal,  what  is  there  left  but  to  try  for  a  time 
the  gipsy's  tent  ?  On  the  Continent  house- 
worship  is  strong  enough  in  all  conscience  ;  but 
in  France,  in  Spain,  in  Italy,  even  in  Germany, 
people  do  think  of  something  beyond  the  house. 
But  here,  where  there  are  no  romantic  crimes, 
to  get  a  genteel  house,  to  keep  (or  "  run  ")  a 


42  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

genteel  house,  or  to  pretend  to  keep  (or  "  run  ") 
a  genteel  house,  is  the  great  first  cause  of  almost 
every  British  delinquency,  from  envy  and 
malignant  slander  up  to  forgery,  robbery,  and 
murder.  And  yet  it  is  a  fact,  as  Borrow  dis- 
covered (when  a  mere  lad  in  a  solicitor's  office), 
that  to  men  in  health  the  house  need  not,  and 
should  not,  be  the  all-absorbing  consideration, 
but  should  be  quite  secondary  to  considerations 
of  honesty  and  sweet  air,  pure  water,  clean 
linen,  good  manners,  freedom  to  migrate  at 
will,  and,  above  all,  freedom  from  "  all  cares  or 
fears  of  law  "  that  may  come  against  a  man  in 
the  shape  of  debts,  duns,  and  tax-gatherers. 

Against  this  folly  of  softening  our  bodies  by 
"  snugness  "  and  degrading  our  souls  by  "  flun- 
keyism,"  Sorrow's  early  life  was  a  protest. 
He  saw  that  if  it  were  really  unwholesome  for 
man  to  be  shone  upon  by  the  sun,  blown  upon 
by  the  winds,  and  rained  upon  by  the  rain,  like 
all  the  other  animals,  man  would  never  have 
existed  at  all,  for  sun  and  wind  and  rain  have 
produced  him  and  everything  that  lives.  He 
saw  that  for  the  cultivation  of  health,  honesty, 
and  good  behaviour  every  man  born  in  the 
temperate  zone  ought,  unless  King  Circum- 
stance says  "  No,"  to  spend  in  the  open  air 
eight  or  nine  hours  at  least  out  of  the  twenty- 
four,  and  ought  to  court  rather  than  to  shun 
Nature's  sweet  shower-bath  the  rain,  unless,  of 
course,  his  chest  is  weak. 


GEORGE   BORROW  43 

The  evanescence  of  literary  fame  is  strikingly 
illustrated  by  recalling  at  this  moment  my  first 
sight  of  Borrow.  I  could  not  have  been  much 
more  than  a  boy,  for  I  and  a  friend  had  gone 
down  to  Yarmouth  in  March  to  enjoy  the 
luxury  of  bathing  in  a  Yarmouth  sea,  and  it  is 
certainly  a  "  good  while  " — to  use  Borrow's 
phrase — since  I  considered  that  a  luxury  suitable 
to  March.  On  the  morning  after  our  arrival, 
having  walked  some  distance  out  of  Yarmouth, 
we  threw  down  our  clothes  and  towels  upon 
the  sand  some  few  yards  from  another  heap  of 
clothes,  which  indicated,  to  our  surprise,  that 
we  were  not,  after  all,  the  only  people  in  Yar- 
mouth who  could  bathe  in  a  biting  wind  ;  and 
soon  we  perceived,  ducking  in  an  immense 
billow  that  came  curving  and  curling  towards 
the  shore,  such  a  pair  of  shoulders  as  I  had  not 
seen  for  a  long  time,  crowned  by  a  head  white 
and  glistening  as  burnished  silver.  (Borrow's 
hair  was  white  I  believe,  when  he  was  quite  a 
young  man.)  When  the  wave  had  broken  upon 
the  sand,  there  was  the  bather  wallowing  on 
the  top  of  the  water  like  a  Polar  bear  disporting 
in  an  Arctic  sun.  In  swimming  Borrow  clawed 
the  water  like  a  dog.  I  had  plunged  into  the 
surf  and  got  very  close  to  the  swimmer,  whom 
I  perceived  to  be  a  man  of  almost  gigantic  pro- 
portions, when  suddenly  an  instinct  told  me 
that  it  was  Lavengro  himself,  who  lived  there- 
abouts, and  the  feeling  that  it  was  he  so  entirely 


44  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

stopped  the  action  of  my  heart  that  I  sank  for  a 
moment  like  a  stone,  soon  to  rise  again,  how- 
ever, in  glow  of  pleasure  and  excitement  :  so 
august  a  presence  was  Lavengro's  then  ! 

I  ought  to  say,  however,  that  Borrow  was  at 
that  time  my  hero.  From  my  childhood  I  had 
taken  the  deepest  interest  in  proscribed  races 
such  as  the  Cagots,  but  especially  in  the  perse- 
cuted children  of  Roma.  I  had  read  accounts 
of  whole  families  being  executed  in  past  times 
for  no  other  crime  than  that  of  their  being  born 
gipsies,  and  tears,  childish  and  yet  bitter,  had 
I  shed  over  their  woes.  Now  Borrow  was  the 
recognized  champion  of  the  gipsies — the  friend 
companion,  indeed,  of  the  proscribed  and 
persecuted  races  of  the  world.  Nor  was  this 
all :  I  saw  in  him  more  of  the  true  Nature 
instinct  than  in  any  other  writer — or  so,  at 
least,  I  imagined.  To  walk  out  from  a  snug 
house  at  Rydal  Mount  for  the  purpose  of 
making  poetical  sketches  for  publication  seemed 
to  me  a  very  different  thing  from  having  no 
home  but  a  tent  in  a  dingle,  or  rather  from 
Borrow's  fashion  of  making  all  Nature  your 
home.  Although  I  would  have  given  worlds  to 
go  up  and  speak  to  him  as  he  was  tossing  his 
clothes  upon  his  back,  I  could  not  do  it.  Morning 
after  morning  did  I  see  him  undress,  wallow  in 
the  sea,  come  out  again,  give  me  a  somewhat 
sour  look,  dress,  and  then  stride  away  inland  at 
a  tremendous  pace,  but  never  could  I  speak  to 


GEORGE   BORROW  45 

him  ;  and  many  years  passed  before  I  saw  him 
again.     He  was  then  half  forgotten. 

For  an  introduction  to  him  at  last  I  was 
indebted  to  Dr.  Gordon  Hake,  the  poet,  who 
had  known  Borrow  for  many  years,  and  whose 
friendship  Borrow  cherished  above  most  things 
— as  was  usual,  indeed,  with  the  friends  of  Dr. 
Hake.  This  was  done  with  some  difficulty,  for, 
in  calling  at  Roehampton  for  a  walk  through 
Richmond  Park  and  about  the  Common,  Bor- 
row's  first  question  was  always,  "  Are  you 
alone  ?  "  and  no  persuasion  could  induce  him 
to  stay  unless  it  could  be  satisfactorily  shown 
that  he  would  not  be  "  pestered  by  strangers." 
On  a  certain  morning,  however,  he  called,  and 
suddenly  coming  upon  me,  there  was  no  retreat- 
ing, and  we  were  introduced.  He  tried  to  be 
as  civil  as  possible,  but  evidently  he  was  much 
annoyed.  Yet  there  was  something  in  the 
very  tone  of  his  voice  that  drew  my  heart  to 
him,  for  to  me  he  was  the  Lavengro  of  my  boy- 
hood still.  My  own  shyness  had  been  long 
before  fingered  off  by  the  rough  handling  of  the 
world,  but  his  retained  all  the  bloom  of  youth, 
and  a  terrible  barrier  it  was,  yet  I  attacked  it 
manfully.  I  knew  that  Borrow  had  read  but 
little  except  in  his  own  out-of-the-way  direc- 
tions ;  but  then  unfortunately,  like  all  special- 
ists, he  considered  that  in  these  his  own  special 
directions  lay  all  the  knowledge  that  was  of  any 
value.  Accordingly,  what  appeared  to  Borrow 


46  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

as  the  most  striking  characteristic  of  the  present 
age  was  its  ignorance. 

Unfortunately,  too,  I  knew  that  for  strangers 
to  talk  of  his  own  published  books  or  of  gipsies 
appeared  to  him  to  be  "  prying,"  though  there 
I  should  have  been  quite  at  home.  I  knew, 
however,  that  in  the  obscure  English  pamphlet 
literature  of  the  last  century,  recording  the 
sayings  and  doings  of  eccentric  people  and 
strange  adventurers,  Borrow  was  very  learned, 
and  I  too  chanced  to  be  far  from  ignorant  in 
that  direction.  I  touched  on  Bamfylde  Moore 
Carew,  but  without  effect.  Borrow  evidently 
considered  that  every  properly  educated  man 
was  familiar  with  the  story  of  Bamfylde  Moore 
Carew  in  its  every  detail.  Then  I  touched  upon 
beer,  the  British  bruiser,  "  gentility-nonsense," 
the  "  trumpery  great  "  ;  then  upon  etymology, 
traced  hoity-toityism  to  toit,  a  roof, — but  only 
to  have  my  shallow  philology  dismissed  with  a 
withering  smile.  I  tried  other  subjects  in  the 
same  direction,  but  with  small  success,  till  in  a 
lucky  moment  I  bethought  myself  of  Ambrose 
Gwinett.  There  is  a  very  scarce  eighteenth- 
century  pamphlet  narrating  the  story  of  Am- 
brose Gwinett,  the  man  who,  after  having  been 
hanged  and  gibbeted  for  murdering  a  traveller 
with  whom  he  had  shared  a  double-bedded  room 
at  a  seaside  inn,  revived  in  the  night,  escaped 
from  the  gibbet  irons,  went  to  sea  as  a  common 
sailor,  and  afterwards  met  on  a  British  man-of- 


GEORGE    BORROW  47 

war  the  very  man  he  had  been  hanged  for 
murdering.  The  truth  was  that  Gwinett's  sup- 
posed victim,  having  been  attacked  on  the  night 
in  question  by  a  violent  bleeding  at  the  nose, 
had  risen  and  left  the  house  for  a  few  minutes' 
walk  in  the  sea-breeze,  when  the  press-gang 
captured  him  and  bore  him  off  to  sea,  where  he 
had  been  in  service  ever  since.  The  story  is 
true,  and  the  pamphlet,  Borrow  afterwards  told 
me  (I  know  not  on  what  authority) ,  was  written 
by  Goldsmith  from  Gwinett's  dictation  for  a 
platter  of  cowheel. 

To  the  bewilderment  of  Dr.  Hake,  I  intro- 
duced the  subject  of  Ambrose  Gwinett  in  the 
same  manner  as  I  might  have  introduced  the 
story  of  "  Achilles'  wrath,"  and  appealed  to 
Dr.  Hake  (who,  of  course,  had  never  heard  of 
the  book  or  the  man)  as  to  whether  a  certain 
incident  in  the  pamphlet  had  gained  or  lost  by 
the  dramatist  who,  at  one  of  the  minor 
theatres,  had  many  years  ago  dramatized  the 
story.  Borrow  was  caught  at  last.  "  What  ?  " 
said  he,  "  you  know  that  pamphlet  about 
Ambrose  Gwinett  ?  "  "  Know  it  ?  "  said  I, 
in  a  hurt  tone,  as  though  he  had  asked  me  if 
I  knew '  Macbeth  '  ;  "of  course  I  know  Ambrose 
Gwinett,  Mr.  Borrow,  don't  you  ?  "  "  And  you 
know  the  play  ?  "  said  he.  "  Of  course  I  do, 
Mr.  Borrow  ?  "  I  said,  in  a  tone  that  was  now 
a  little  angry  at  such  an  insinuation  of  crass 
ignorance.  "  Why,"  said  he,  "  it 's  years  and 


48  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

years  since  it  was  acted ;  I  never  was  much  of 
a  theatre  man,  but  I  did  go  to  see  that."  "  Well, 
I  should  rather  think  you  did,  Mr.  Borrow," 
said  I.  "  But,"  said  he,  staring  hard  at  me, 
"  you — you  were  not  born  !  "  "  And  I  was 
not  born,"  said  I,  "  when  the  '  Agamemnon ' 
was  produced,  and  yet  one  reads  the  '  Aga- 
memnon/ Mr.  Borrow.  I  have  read  the  drama 
of  '  Ambrose  Gwinett.'  I  have  it  bound  in 
morocco  with  some  more  of  Douglas  Jerrold's 
early  transpontine  plays,  and  some  ^Eschylean 
dramas  by  Mr.  Fitzball.  I  will  lend  it  to  you, 
Mr.  Borrow,  if  you  like."  He  was  completely 
conquered.  "  Hake !  "  he  cried,  in  a  loud 
voice,  regardless  of  my  presence.  "  Hake  !  your 
friend  knows  everything."  Then  he  murmured 
to  himself,  "  Wonderful  man  !  Knows  Ambrose 
Gwinett !  " 

It  is  such  delightful  reminiscences  as  these 
that  will  cause  me  to  have  as  long  as  I  live  a 
very  warm  place  in  my  heart  for  the  memory 
of  George  Borrow. 

From  that  time  I  used  to  see  Borrow  often 
at  Roehampton,  sometimes  at  Putney,  and 
sometimes,  but  not  often,  in  London.  I  could 
have  seen  much  more  of  him  than  I  did  had 
not  the  whirlpool  of  London,  into  which  I 
plunged  for  a  time,  borne  me  away  from  this 
most  original  of  men  ;  and  this  is  what  I  so 
greatly  lament  now :  for  of  Borrow  it  may  be 
said,  as  it  was  said  of  a  greater  man  still,  that 


GEORGE   BORROW  49 

"  after  Nature  made  him  she  forthwith  broke 
the  mould."  The  last  time  I  ever  saw  him  was 
shortly  before  he  left  London  to  live  in  the 
country.  It  was,  I  remember  well,  on  Waterloo 
Bridge,  where  I  had  stopped  to  gaze  at  a  sunset 
of  singular  and  striking  splendour,  whose  gor- 
geous clouds  and  ruddy  mists  were  reeling  and 
boiling  over  the  West-End.  Borrow  came  up 
and  stood  leaning  over  the  parapet,  entranced 
by  the  sight,  as  well  he  might  be.  Like  most 
people  born  in  flat  districts,  he  had  a  passion 
for  sunsets.  Turner  could  not  have  painted 
that  one,  I  think,  and  certainly  my  pen  could 
not  describe  it ;  for  the  London  smoke  was 
flushed  by  the  sinking  sun  and  had  lost  its  dun- 
ness,  and,  reddening  every  moment  as  it  rose 
above  the  roofs,  steeples,  and  towers,  it  went 
curling  round  the  sinking  sun  in  a  rosy  vapour, 
leaving,  however,  just  a  segment  of  a  golden 
rim,  which  gleamed  as  dazzlingly  as  in  the 
thinnest  and  clearest  air — a  peculiar  effect 
which  struck  Borrow  deeply.  I  never  saw 
such  a  sunset  before  or  since,  not  even  on 
Waterloo  Bridge ;  and  from  its  association 
with  "  the  last  of  Borrow  "  I  shall  never  forget  it. 


III. 

STUDENTS  of  Borrow  will  be  as  much  sur- 
prised as  pleased  to  find  what  a  large 
collection  of  documents  Dr.  Knapp  has 
been  able  to  use  in  compiling  this  long-expected 
biography.*  Indeed,  the  collection  might  have 
been  larger  and  richer  still.  For  instance,  in  the 
original  manuscript  of '  Zincali '  (in  the  possession 
of  the  present  writer)  there  are  some  variations 
from  the  printed  text ;  but,  what  is  of  very 
much  more  importance,  the  whole — or  nearly  the 
whole — of  Borrow's  letters  to  the  Bible  Society, 
which  Dr.  Knapp  believed  to  be  lost,  have  been 
discovered  in  the  crypt  of  the  Bible  House  in 
which  the  records  of  the  Society  are  stored. 
But  even  without  these  materials  two  massive 
volumes  crammed  with  documents  throwing 
light  upon  the  life  and  career  of  a  man  like 
George  Borrow  must  needs  be  interesting  to  the 
student  of  English  literature.  For  among  all 
the  remarkable  characters  that  during  the 
middle  of  the  present  century  figured  in  the 
world  of  letters,  the  most  eccentric,  the  most 
whimsical,  and  in  every  way  the  most 

*  '  Life,  Writings,  and  Correspondence  of  George  Borrow.' 
Derived  from  Official  and  other  Authentic  Sources.  By 
William  I.  Knapp,  Ph.D.  With  Portrait  and  Illustrations. 
2  vols.  (Murray.) 

5° 


GEORGE   BORROW  51 

extraordinary  was  surely  the  man  whom  Dr. 
Knapp  calls,  appropriately  enough,  his  "  hero." 
It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  there  was 
not  a  single  point  in  which  Borrow  resembled 
any  other  writing  man  of  his  time  ;  indeed, 
we  cannot,  at  the  moment,  recall  any  really 
important  writer  of  any  period  whose  eccen- 
tricity of  character  can  be  compared  with  his. 
At  the  basis  of  the  artistic  temperament  is 
generally  that  "  sweet  reasonableness "  the 
lack  of  which  we  excuse  in  Borrow  and  in 
almost  no  one  else.  As  to  literary  whim,  it 
must  not  be  supposed  that  this  quality  is 
necessarily  and  always  the  outcome  of  tem- 
perament. There  are  some  authors  of  whom 
it  may  be  said  that  the  moment  they  take  pen 
in  hand  they  pass  into  their  "  literary  mood,"  a 
mood  that  in  their  cases  does  not  seem  to  be 
born  of  temperament,  but  to  spring  from  some 
fantastic  movement  of  the  intellect.  Sterne, 
for  instance,  the  greatest  of  all  masters  of 
whim  (not  excluding  Rabelais),  passed  when  in 
the  act  of  writing  into  a  literary  mood  which, 
as  "  Yorick,"  he  tried  to  live  up  to  in  his  private 
life — tried  in  vain.  With  regard  to  Charles 
Lamb,  his  temperament,  no  doubt,  was  whimsi- 
cal enough,  and  yet  how  many  rich  and  rare 
passages  in  his  writings  are  informed  by  a  whim 
of  a  purely  intellectual  kind — a  whim  which 
could  only  have  sprung  from  that  delicious 
literary  mood  of  his,  engendered  by  much 


52  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

study  of  quaint  old  writers,  into  which  he  passed 
when  at  his  desk  !  But  whatsoever  is  whimsical, 
whatsoever  is  eccentric  and  angular,  in  Sorrow's 
writings  is  the  natural,  the  inevitable  growth 
of  a  nature  more  whimsical,  more  eccentric, 
more  angular  still. 

That  such  a  man  should  have  had  an  extra- 
ordinary  life-experience  was  to   be   expected. 
And  an  extraordinary  life-experience  Borrow's 
was,  to  be  sure  !     This  alone  would  lend  an 
especial   interest   to   Borrow's   biography — the 
fact,  we  mean,  of  his  life  having  been  extra- 
ordinary.    For  in  these  days  no  lives,  as  a  rule, 
are  less  adventurous,  none,  as  a  rule,  less  tinged 
with  romance,  than  the  lives  of  those  who  attain 
eminence  in  the  world  of  letters.     No  doubt 
they  nowadays  move  about  from  place  to  place 
a  good  deal ;   not  a  few  of  them  may  even  be 
called  travellers,  or  at  least  globe-trotters  ;  but, 
alas  !   in  globe-trotting  who  shall  hope  to  meet 
with  adventures  of  a  more  romantic  kind  than 
those  connected  with  a  railway  collision  or  a 
storm  at  sea  ?     And  this  was  so  in  days  that 
preceded  ours.     It  was  so  with  Scott,  it  was  so 
with  Dickens,  it  was  so  with  even  Dumas,  who, 
chained  to  his  desk  for  months  and  months  at  a 
stretch,  could  only  be  seen  by  his  friends  during 
the  intervals  of  work.     Nay,  even  with  regard 
to  the  writing  men  of  the  far  past,  the  more 
time  a  man  gave  to  literary  production  the  less 
time  he  had  to  drink  the  rich  wine  of  life,  to  see 


GEORGE   BORROW  53 

the  world,  to  study  nature  and  nature's  enigma 
man. 

Perhaps  one  reason  why  we  have  almost 
no  record  of  what  the  greatest  of  all  writing 
men  was  doing  in  the  world  is  that  while  his 
friends  were  elbowing  the  tide  of  life  in  the 
streets  of  London,  or  fighting  in  the  Low 
Countries,  or  carousing  at  the  Mermaid  Tavern, 
or  at  the  Apollo  Saloon,  he  was  filling  every 
moment  with  work — work  which  enabled  him, 
before  he  reached  his  fifty-second  year,  to  build 
up  that  literary  monument  of  his,  that  edifice 
which  made  the  monuments  of  the  others,  his 
contemporaries,  seem  like  the  handiwork  of 
pigmies.  But  as  regards  Borrow,  student  though 
he  was,  it  is  not  as  an  author  that  we  think  of 
him  ;  it  is  as  the  adventurer,  it  is  as  the  great 
Romany  Rye,  who  discovered  the  most  inter- 
esting people  in  Europe,  and  as  a  brother 
vagabond  lived  with  them — lived  with  them 
"  on  the  accont  of  health,  sweetness  of  the  air, 
and  for  enjoying  the  pleasure  of  Nature's  life," 
to  quote  the  "  testimonial  "  of  the  prose-poet 
Sylvester  Boswell. 

Even  by  his  personal  appearance  Borrow 
was  marked  off  from  his  fellow-men.  As  a 
gipsy  girl  once  remarked,  "  Nobody  as  ever 
see'd  the  white-headed  Romany  Rye  ever 
forgot  him."  Standing  considerably  above  six 
feet  in  height,  he  was  built  as  perfectly  as  a 
Greek  statue,  and  his  practice  of  athletic 


54  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

exercises  gave  his  every  movement  the  easy 
elasticity  of  an  athlete  under  training.  As  to 
his  countenance,  "  noble "  is  the  only  word 
that  can  be  used  to  describe  it.  The  silvery 
whiteness  of  the  thick  crop  of  hair  seemed  to 
add  in  a  remarkable  way  to  the  beauty  of  the 
hairless  face,  but  also  it  gave  a  strangeness  to 
it,  and  this  strangeness  was  intensified  by  a 
certain  incongruity  between  the  features  (perfect 
Roman-Greek  in  type)  and  the  Scandinavian 
complexion,  luminous  and  sometimes  rosy  as 
an  English  girl's.  An  increased  intensity  was 
lent  by  the  fair  skin  to  the  dark  lustre  of  the 
eyes.  What  struck  the  observer,  therefore, 
was  not  the  beauty  but  the  strangeness  of  the 
man's  appearance.  It  was  not  this  feature  or 
that  which  struck  the  eye,  it  was  the  expression 
of  the  face  as  a  whole.  If  it  were  possible  to 
describe  this  expression  in  a  word  or  two,  it 
might,  perhaps,  be  called  a  shy  self-conscious- 
ness. 

How  did  it  come  about,  then,  that  a  man  shy, 
self-conscious,  and  sensitive  to  the  last  degree, 
became  the  Ulysses  of  the  writing  fraternity, 
wandering  among  strangers  all  over  Europe,  and 
consorting  on  intimate  terms  with  that  race 
who,  more  than  all  others,  are  repelled  by  shy 
self-consciousness — the  gipsies  ?  This,  perhaps, 
is  how  the  puzzle  may  be  explained.  When 
Borrow  was  talking  to  people  in  his  own  class 
of  life  there  was  always  in  his  bearing  a  kind 


GEORGE    BORROW  55 

of  shy,  defiant  egotism.  What  Carlyle  calls 
the  "  armed  neutrality  "  of  social  intercourse 
oppressed  him.  He  felt  himself  to  be  in  the 
enemy's  camp.  In  his  eyes  there  was  always 
a  kind  of  watchfulness,  as  if  he  were  taking 
stock  of  his  interlocutor  and  weighing  him 
against  himself.  He  seemed  to  be  observing 
what  effect  his  words  were  having,  and  this 
attitude  repelled  people  at  first.  But  the 
moment  he  approached  a  gipsy  on  the  heath, 
or  a  poor  Jew  in  Houndsditch,  or  a  homeless 
wanderer  by  the  wayside,  he  became  another 
man.  He  threw  off  the  burden  of  restraint. 
The  feeling  of  the  "  armed  neutrality  "  was 
left  behind,  and  he  seemed  to  be  at  last  enjoying 
the  only  social  intercourse  that  could  give  him 
pleasure.  This  it  was  that  enabled  him  to 
make  friends  so  entirely  with  the  gipsies.  Not- 
withstanding what  is  called  "  Romany  guile  " 
(which  is  the  growth  of  ages  of  oppression),  the 
basis  of  the  Romany  character  is  a  joyous 
frankness.  Once  let  the  isolating  wall  which 
shuts  off  the  Romany  from  the  "  Gorgio  "  be 
broken  through,  and  the  communicativeness  of 
the  Romany  temperament  begins  to  show 
itself.  The  gipsies  are  extremely  close  ob- 
servers ;  they  were  very  quick  to  notice  how 
different  was  Borrow's  bearing  towards  them- 
selves from  his  bearing  towards  people  of 
his  own  race,  and  Borrow  used  to  say 
that  "  old  Mrs.  Herne  and  Leonora  were 


56  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

the  only  gipsies  who  suspected  and  disliked 
him." 

Thus  it  came  about  that  the  gipsies  and 
the  wanderers  generally  were  almost  the  only 
people  in  any  country  who  saw  the  winsome  side 
of  Borrow.  A  truly  winsome  side  he  had.  Yes, 
notwithstanding  all  that  has  been  said  about 
him  to  the  contrary,  Borrow  was  a  most  inter- 
esting and  charming  companion.  We  all  have 
our  angularities  ;  we  all  have  unpleasant  facets 
of  character  when  occasion  offers  for  showing 
them.  But  there  are  some  unfortunate  people 
whose  angularities  are  for  ever  chafing  and 
irritating  their  friends.  Borrow  was  one  of 
these.  It  is  very  rarely  indeed  that  one  meets 
a  friend  or  an  acquaintance  of  Borrow's  who 
speaks  of  him  with  the  kindness  he  deserved. 
When  a  friend  or  an  acquaintance  relates  an 
anecdote  of  him  the  asperity  with  which  he 
does  so  is  really  remarkable  and  quite  painful. 
It  was — it  must  have  been — far  from  Dr. 
Gordon  Hake's  wish  to  speak  unkindly  of  his 
old  friend  who  remained  to  the  last  deeply 
attached  to  him.  And  yet  few  things  have 
done  more  to  prejudice  the  public  against 
Borrow  than  the  Doctor's  tale  of  Lavengro's 
outrage  at  Rougham  Rookery,  the  residence  of 
the  banker  Bevan,  one  of  the  kindest  and  most 
benevolent  men  in  Suffolk. 

This  story,  often  told  by  Hake,  appeared  at 
last  in  print  in  his  memoirs.  Invited  to  dinner 


GEORGE   BORROW  57 

by  Mr.  Bevan,  Borrow  accepted  the  invitation 
and,  according  to  the  anecdote,  thus  behaved  : 
During  dinner  Mrs.  Bevan,  thinking  to  please 
him,  said,  "  Oh,  Mr.  Borrow,  I  have  read  your 
books  with  so  much  pleasure !  "  On  which 
Borrow  exclaimed,  "  Pray  what  books  do  you 
mean,  ma'am — do  you  mean  my  account 
books  ?  "  Then,  rising  from  the  table,  he 
walked  up  and  down  among  the  servants  during 
the  whole  dinner,  and  afterwards  wandered 
about  the  rooms  and  passages  till  the  carriage 
could  be  ordered  for  his  return  home.  A 
monstrous  proceeding  truly,  and  not  to  be 
condoned  by  any  circumstances.  Yet  some 
part  of  its  violence  may,  perhaps,  thus  be 
explained.  Borrow's  loyalty  to  a  friend  was 
proverbial — until  he  and  the  friend  quarrelled. 
A  man  who  dared  say  an  ungenerous  word 
against  a  friend  of  Borrow's  ran  the  risk  of  being 
knocked  down.  Borrow  on  this  occasion  had 
been  driven  half  mad  with  rage — unreasoning, 
ignorant  rage — against  the  Bury  banking-house, 
because  it  had  "  struck  the  docket  "  against  a 
friend  of  Borrow's,  the  heir  to  a  considerable 
estate,  who  had  got  into  difficulties.  What 
Borrow  yearned  to  do  was,  as  he  told  the  present 
writer,  to  cane  the  banker.  He  had,  as  far  as 
his  own  reputation  went,  far  better  have  done 
this  and  taken  the  consequences  than  have 
insulted  the  banker's  wife — one  of  the  most 
gentle,  amiable,  and  unassuming  ladies  in 


58  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

Suffolk.  Dr.  Knapp  speaks  very  sharply  of 
Miss  Cobb's  remarks  upon  Borrow,  and  certainly 
these  remarks  are  made  with  a  great  deal  too 
much  acidity.  But  if  the  Borrovian  is  to  lose 
temper  with  every  one  who  girds  at  Borrow  he 
will  lead  a  not  very  comfortable  life. 

Dr.  Knapp  has  no  doubt  whatever  that 
'  Lavengro  '  is  in  the  main  an  autobiography. 
We  have  none.  The  only  question  is  how  much 
Dichtung  is  mingled  with  the  Wahrheit.  Had 
it  not  been  for  the  amazingly  clumsy  pieces  of 
fiction  which  he  threw  into  the  narrative — 
such  incidents  as  that  of  his  meeting  on  the 
road  the  sailor  son  of  the  old  apple-woman  of 
London  Bridge,  and  the  exaggerated  description 
of  the  man  sent  to  sleep  by  reading  Words- 
worth— few  readers  would  have  doubted  the 
autobiographical  nature  of  '  Lavengro '  and 
'  The  Romany  Rye.'  Such  incidents  as  these 
shed  an  air  of  unreality  over  the  whole. 

All  writers  upon  Borrow  fall  into  the  mistake 
of  considering  him  to  have  been  an  East  Anglian. 
They  might  as  well  call  Charlotte  Bronte  a 
Yorkshirewoman  as  call  Borrow  an  East  Anglian. 
He  was,  of  course,  no  more  an  East  Anglian 
than  an  Irishman  born  in  London  is  an  English- 
man. He  had  at  bottom  no  East  Anglian 
characteristics.  He  inherited  nothing  from  Nor- 
folk save  his  accent  and  his  love  of  "  leg  of 
mutton  and  turnips."  Yet  he  is  a  striking 
illustration  of  the  way  in  which  the  locality 


GEORGE   BORROW  59 

that  has  given  birth  to  a  man  influences  him 
throughout  his  life.  The  fact  of  Sorrow's 
having  been  born  in  East  Anglia  was  the  result 
of  accident.  His  father,  a  Cornishman  of  a 
good  middle-class  family,  had  been  obliged, 
owing  to  a  youthful  escapade,  to  leave  his  native 
place  and  enlist  as  a  common  soldier.  After- 
wards he  became  a  recruiting  officer,  and  moved 
about  from  one  part  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland 
to  another.  It  so  chanced  that  while  staying 
at  East  Dereham,  in  Norfolk,  he  met  and  fell  in 
love  with  a  lady  of  French  extraction.  Not 
one  drop  of  East  Anglian  blood  was  in  the  veins 
of  Borrow's  father,  and  very  little  in  the  veins 
of  his  mother.  Borrow's  ancestry  was  pure 
Cornish  on  one  side,  and  on  the  other  mainly 
French.  But  such  was  the  sublime  egotism  of 
Borrow — perhaps  we  should  have  said  such  is 
the  sublime  egotism  of  human  nature — that 
the  fact  of  his  having  been  born  in  East  Anglia 
made  him  look  upon  that  part  of  the  world 
as  the  very  hub  of  the  universe. 

There  is,  it  must  be  confessed,  something  to 
us  very  agreeable  in  Dr.  Knapp's  single-minded 
hero-worship.  A  scholar  and  a  philologist  him- 
self, he  seems  to  have  devoted  a  large  portion 
of  his  life  to  the  study  of  Borrow — following  in 
Lavengro's  footsteps  from  one  country  to 
another  with  unflagging  enthusiasm.  Now  and 
again,  undoubtedly,  this  hero-worship  runs  to 
excess  :  the  faults  of  style  and  of  method  in 


6o 

Borrow  s  writings  are  condoned  or  are  passed 
by  unobserved  by  Dr.  Knapp,  while  the  most 
unanswerable  strictures  upon  them  by  others 
are  resented.  For  instance,  at  the  end  of  the 
following  extract  from  the  report  of  the  gentle- 
man who  read  '  Zincali '  for  Mr.  Murray,  he 
appends  a  note  of  exclamation,  as  though 
he  considers  the  admirable  advice  given  to  be 
eccentric  or  bad  : — 

"  The  Dialogues  are  amongst  the  best  parts 
of  the  book ;  but  in  several  of  them  the  tone 
of  the  speakers,  of  those  especially  who  are  in 
humble  life,  is  too  correct  and  elevated,  and 
therefore  out  of  character.  This  takes  away 
from  their  effect.  I  think  it  would  be  very 
advisable  that  Mr.  Borrow  should  go  over  them 
with  reference  to  this  point,  simplifying  a  few 
of  the  terms  of  expression  and  introducing  a 
few  contractions — dorits,  can'ts,  &c.  This  would 
improve  them  greatly." 

Now  the  truth  is  that  Mr.  Murray's  reader, 
whoever  he  was,*  pointed  out  the  one  great 
blemish  in  all  Borrow's  dramatic  pictures  of 
gipsy  life,  wheresoever  the  scene  may  be  laid. 
Take  his  pictures  of  English  gipsies.  The 
reader  has  only  to  compare  the  dialogue 
between  gipsies  given  in  that  photographic 
study  of  Romany  life  '  In  Gipsy  Tents  '  with 
the  dialogues  in  '  Lavengro  '  to  see  how  the 

*  The  "  reader "  was  Richard  Ford,  author  of  the 
'  Handbook  for  Travellers  in  Spain,'  &c.  He  subsequently 
became  Borrow's  warm  admirer  and  friend. 


GEORGE    BORROW  61 

illusion  in  Sorrow's  narrative  is  disturbed  by 
the  uncolloquial  vocabulary  of  the  speakers. 
After  all  allowance  is  made  for  the  Romany's 
love  of  high-sounding  words,  it  considerably 
weakens  our  belief  in  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Petulengro, 
Ursula,  and  the  rest,  to  find  them  using  com- 
plex sentences  and  bookish  words  which,  even 
among  English  people,  are  rarely  heard  in 
conversation. 

Dr.  Knapp  says  emphatically  that  Borrow 
never  created  a  character,  and  that  the  originals 
are  easily  recognizable  to  one  who  thoroughly 
knows  the  times  and  Sorrow's  writings.  This 
is  true,  no  doubt,  as  regards  people  with  whom 
he  was  brought  into  contact  at  Norwich,  and, 
indeed,  generally  before  the  period  of  his  gipsy 
wanderings.  It  must  not  be  supposed,  how- 
ever, that  such  characters  as  the  man  who 
"  touched  "  to  avert  the  evil  chance  and  the 
man  who  taught  himself  Chinese  are  in  any 
sense  portraits.  They  have  so  many  of  Borrow's 
own  peculiarities  that  they  might  rather  be 
called  portraits  of  himself.  There  was  nothing 
that  Borrow  strove  against  with  more  energy 
than  the  curious  impulse,  which  he  seems  to 
have  shared  with  Dr.  Johnson,  to  touch  the 
objects  along  his  path  in  order  to  save  himself 
from  the  evil  chance.  He  never  conquered  the 
superstition.  In  walking  through  Richmond 
Park  he  would  step  out  of  his  way  constantly 
to  touch  a  tree,  and  he  was  offended  if  the 


62  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

friend  he  was  with  seemed  to  observe  it.  Many 
of  the  peculiarities  of  the  man  who  taught 
himself  Chinese  were  also  Borrow's  own. 

"  But  what  about  Isopel  Berners  ?  "  the 
reader  will  ask.  "  How  much  of  truth  and 
how  much  of  fiction  went  to  the  presentation 
of  this  most  interesting  character  ?  "  Seeing 
that  Dr.  Knapp  has  at  his  command  such  an 
immense  amount  of  material  in  manuscript, 
the  reader  will  feel  some  disappointment  at 
discovering  that  the  book  tells  us  nothing  new 
about  her.  The  character  he  names  Isopel 
Berners  was  just  the  sort  of  girl  in  every  way 
to  attract  Borrow,  and  if  he  had  had  the  feeblest 
spark  of  the  love-passion  in  his  constitution  one 
could  almost  imagine  his  falling  in  love  with 
her.  Yet  even  the  portrait  of  Isopel  is  marred 
by  Borrow's  impulse  towards  exaggeration.  He 
must  needs  describe  her  as  being  taller  than 
himself,  and  as  he  certainly  stood  six  feet  three 
Isopel  would  have  been  far  better  suited  to  sit 
by  the  side  of  Borrow's  friend  the  "  Norfolk 
giant,"  Hales,  in  the  little  London  public- 
house  where  he  latterly  resided,  than  to  become 
famous  as  a  fighting  woman  who  could  conquer 
the  Flaming  Tinman.  Few  indeed  have  been 
the  women  who  could  stand  up  for  long  before 
a  trained  boxer,  and  these  must  needs  be  not 
too  tall,  and  moreover  they  must  have  their 
breasts  padded  after  the  manner  of  a  well- 
known  gipsy  girl  who  excelled  in  this  once 


GEORGE   BORROW  63 

fashionable  accomplishment.  Even  then  a 
woman's  instinct  impels  her  to  guard  her  chest 
more  carefully  than  she  guards  her  face,  and 
this  leads  to  disaster.  Altogether  Borrow,  by 
his  wilful  exaggeration,  makes  the  reader  a 
little  sceptical  about  Isopel,  who  was  really  an 
East  Anglian  road-girl  of  the  finest  type,  known 
to  the  Boswells,  and  remembered  not  many 
years  ago.  All  that  Dr.  Knapp  has  derived 
from  the  documents  in  his  possession  concerning 
her  is  the  following  extraordinary  passage  from 
the  original  manuscript,  which  Borrow  struck 
out  of  '  Lavengro.'  He  says  : — 

"As  to  the  remarkable  character  introduced 
into  '  Lavengro  '  and  '  Romany  Rye  '  under  the 
name  of  Isopel  Berners,  I  have  no  light  from 
the  MSS.  of  George  Borrow,  save  the  following 
fragment,  which  perhaps  I  ought  to  have 
suppressed.  I  am  sorry  if  it  dispel  any  illu- 
sions : — 

"  (Loquitur  Petidengro)  '  My  mind  at  present 
rather  inclines  towards  two  wives.  I  have 
heard  that  King  Pharaoh  had  two,  if  not  more. 
Now,  I  think  myself  as  good  a  man  as  he  ;  and 
if  he  had  more  wives  than  one,  why  should  not 
I,  whose  name  is  Petulengro  ?  ' 

"  '  But  what  would  Mrs.  Petulengro  say  ?  ' 

"  '  Why,  to  tell  you  the  truth,  brother,  it 
was  she  who  first  put  the  thought  into  my 
mind.  She  has  always,  you  know,  had  strange 
notions  in  her  head,  gorgiko  notions,  I  suppose 
we  may  call  them,  about  gentility  and  the  like, 
and  reading  and  writing.  Now,  though  she  can 


64  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

neither  read  nor  write  herself,  she  thinks  that 
she  is  lost  among  our  people  and  that  they  are 
no  society  for  her.  So  says  she  to  me  one  day, 
"  Pharaoh,"  says  she,  "  I  wish  you  would  take 
another  wife,  that  I  might  have  a  little  pleasant 
company.  As  for  these  here,  I  am  their 
betters."  "  I  have  no  objection,"  said  I  ; 
"  who  shall  it  be  ?  Shall  it  be  a  Cooper  or  a 
Stanley  ?  "  "A  Cooper  or  a  Stanley  !  "  said 
she,  with  a  toss  of  her  head,  "  I  might  as  well 
keep  my  present  company  as  theirs  ;  none  of 
your  rubbish  ;  let  it  be  a  gorgie,  one  that  I  can 
speak  an  idea  with  " — that  was  her  word,  I 
think.  Now  I  am  thinking  that  this  here  Bess 
of  yours  would  be  just  the  kind  of  person  both 
for  my  wife  and  myself.  My  wife  wants  some- 
thing gorgiko,  something  genteel.  Now  Bess  is 
of  blood  gorgious  ;  if  you  doubt  it,  look  in  her 
face,  all  full  of  pawno  ratter,  white  blood, 
brother  ;  and  as  for  gentility,  nobody  can  make 
exceptions  to  Bess's  gentility,  seeing  she  was 
born  in  the  workhouse  of  Melford  the  Short, 
where  she  learned  to  read  and  write.  She  is 
no  Irish  woman,  brother,  but  English  pure,  and 
her  father  was  a  farmer. 

"  '  So  much  as  far  as  my  wife  is  concerned. 
As  for  myself,  I  tell  you  what,  brother,  I  want 
a  strapper  ;  one  who  can  give  and  take.  The 
Flying  Tinker  is  abroad,  vowing  vengeance 
against  us  all.  I  know  what  the  Flying  Tinker 
is,  so  does  Tawno.  The  Flying  Tinker  came  to 
our  camp.  "  Damn  you  all,"  says  he,  "  I  '11 
fight  the  best  of  you  for  nothing." — "  Done  !  " 
says  Tawno,  "  I  '11  be  ready  for  you  in  a  minute." 
So  Tawno  went  into  his  tent  and  came  out 


GEORGE   BORROW  65 

naked.  "  Here  's  at  you,"  says  Tawno.  Brother, 
Tawno  fought  for  two  hours  with  the  Flying 
Tinker,  for  two  whole  hours,  and  it 's  hard  to 
say  which  had  the  best  of  it  or  the  worst.  I 
tell  you  what,  brother,  I  think  Tawno  had  the 
worst  of  it.  Night  came  on.  Tawno  went  into 
his  tent  to  dress  himself  and  the  Flying  Tinker 
went  his  way. 

"  '  Now  suppose,  brother,  the  Flying  Tinker 
comes  upon  us  when  Tawno  is  away.     Who  is 
to   fight   the   Flying   Tinker   when   he   says : 
"  D — n  you,  I  will  fight  the  best  of  you  "  ? 
Brother,  I  will  fight  the  Flying  Tinker  for  five 
pounds  ;    but  I  couldn't  for  less.     The  Flying 
Tinker  is  a  big  man,  and  though  he  hasn't  my 
science,    he    weighs    five    stone    heavier.      It 
wouldn't  do  for  me  to  fight  a  man  like  that  for 
nothing.     But  there  's  Bess,  who  can  afford  to 
fight  the  Flying  Tinker  at  any  time  for  what 
he's  got,  and  that 's  three  ha'pence.     She  can 
beat  him,  brother  ;   I  bet  five  pounds  that  Bess 
can  beat  the  Flying  Tinker.     Now,  if  I  marry 
Bess,  I  'm  quite  easy  on  his  score.     He  comes 
to  our  camp  and  says  his  say.     "  I  won't  dirty 
my  hands  with  you,"  says  I,  "  at  least  not  under 
five  pounds  ;   but  here  's  Bess  who  '11  fight  you 
for  nothing."     I  tell  you  what,  brother,  when 
he  knows  that  Bess  is  Mrs.  Pharaoh,  he  '11  fight 
shy   of   our   camp ;    he   won't   come   near  it, 
brother.     He  knows  Bess  don't  like  him,  and 
what 's  more,  that  she  can  lick  him.     He  11 
let  us  alone  ;    at  least  I  think  so.     If  he  does 
come,  I  '11  smoke  my  pipe  whilst  Bess  is  beat- 
ing   the    Flying    Tinker.     Brother,    I  'm    dry, 
and  will  now  take  a  cup  of  ale.'  ' 

F 


66  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

Why  did  Borrow  reject  this  passage  ?  Was 
it  owing  to  his  dread  of  respectability's  frowns  ? 
— or  was  it  not  rather  because  he  felt  that  here 
his  exaggeration,  his  departure  from  the  true 
in  quest  of  the  striking,  did  not  recommend 
itself  to  his  cooler  judgment  ?  For  those  who 
know  anything  of  the  gipsies  would  say  at  once 
that  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  Mrs. 
Petulengro  to  make  this  suggestion  ;  and  that, 
even  if  she  had  made  it,  Mr.  Petulengro  would 
not  have  dared  to  broach  it  to  any  English  road- 
girl,  least  of  all  to  a  girl  like  Isopel  Berners. 
The  passage,  however,  is  the  most  interesting 
document  that  Dr.  Knapp  has  published. 

What  may  be  called  the  Isopel  Berners 
chapter  of  Borrow's  life  was  soon  to  be  followed 
by  the  "  veiled  period  " — that  is  to  say,  the 
period  between  the  point  where  ends  '  The 
Romany  Rye '  and  the  point  where  the  Bible 
Society  engages  Borrow. 

Dr.  Knapp's  mind  seems  a  good  deal  exercised 
concerning  this  period.  Borrow  having  chosen 
to  draw  the  veil  over  that  period,  no  one  has 
any  right  to  raise  it — or,  rather,  perhaps  no  one 
would  have  had  any  right  to  do  so  had  not 
Borrow  himself  thrown  such  a  needless  mystery 
around  it.  In  considering  any  matter  in  con- 
nexion with  Borrow  it  is  always  necessary  to 
take  into  account  the  secretiveness  of  his  dis- 
position, and  also  his  passion  for  posing.  He 
had  a  child's  fondness  for  the  wonderful.  It 


GEORGE   BORROW  67 

is  through  his  own  love  of  mystification  that 
students  like  Dr.  Knapp  must  needs  pry  into 
these  matters — must  needs  ask  why  Borrow 
drew  the  veil  over  seven  years — must  needs  ask 
whether  during  the  "  veiled  period  "  he  led  a 
life  of  squalid  misery,  compared  with  which  his 
sojourn  with  Isopel  Berners  in  Mumpers'  Dingle 
was  luxury,  or  whether  he  was  really  travelling, 
as  he  pretended  to  have  been,  over  the  world. 

By  yielding  to  his  instinct  as  a  born  showman 
he  excites  a  curiosity  which  would  otherwise  be 
unjustifiable.  Even  if  Dr.  Knapp  had  been 
able  to  approach  Borrow's  stepdaughter — which 
he  seems  not  to  have  been  able  to  do — it  is 
pretty  certain  that  she  could  have  told  him 
nothing  of  that  mysterious  seven  years.  For 
about  this  subject  the  people  to  whom  Borrow 
seems  to  have  been  most  reticent  were  his 
wife  and  her  daughter.  Indeed,  it  was  not 
until  after  his  wife's  death  that  he  would  allude 
to  this  period  even  to  his  most  intimate  friends. 
One  of  the  very  few  people  to  whom  he  did 
latterly  talk  with  anything  like  frankness  about 
this  period  in  his  life — Dr.  Gordon  Hake — is 
dead ;  and  perhaps  there  is  not  more  than 
about  one  other  person  now  living  who  had 
anything  of  his  confidence. 

With  regard  to  this  veiled  period,  people  who 
read  the  idyllic  pictures  in  '  Lavengro  '  and 
'  The  Romany  Rye '  of  the  life  of  a  gipsy 
gentleman  working  as  a  hedge-smith  in  the 


68  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

dingle  or  by  the  roadside  seem  to  forget  that 
Borrow  was  then  working  not  for  amusement, 
but  for  bread,  and  they  forget  how  scant  the 
bread  must  have  been  that  could  be  bought  for 
the  odd  sixpence  or  the  few  coppers  that  he 
was  able  to  earn.  To  those,  however,  who  do 
not  forget  this  it  needs  no  revelation  from 
documents,  and  none  from  any  surviving  friend, 
to  come  to  the  conclusion  that  as  Borrow  was 
mainly  living  in  England  during  these  seven 
years  (continuing  for  a  considerable  time  his 
life  of  a  wanderer,  and  afterwards  living  as  an 
obscure  literary  struggler  in  Norwich),  his  life 
was  during  this  period  one  of  privation,  dis- 
appointment, and  gloom.  It  was  for  him  to 
decide  what  he  would  give  to  the  public  and 
what  he  would  withhold. 

The  concluding  chapter  of  Dr.  Knapp's  book 
is  not  only  pathetic — it  is  painful.  In  the 
summer  of  1874  Borrow  left  London,  bade 
adieu  to  Mr.  Murray  and  a  few  friends,  and 
returned  to  Oulton — to  die.  On  the  26th  of 
July,  1881,  he  was  found  dead  in  his  home  at 
Oulton,  in  his  seventy-ninth  year. 


II. 

DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI, 

1828-1882. 
i. 

AT  Birchington-on-Sea  one  of  the  most 
rarely  gifted  men  of  our  time  has  just 
died  [April  gth,  1882]  after  a  lingering 
illness.  During  the  time  that  his  '  Ballads 
and  Sonnets  '  was  passing  through  the  press 
last  autumn  his  health  began  to  give  way, 
and  he  left  London  for  Cumberland.  A  stay 
of  a  few  weeks  in  the  Vale  of  St.  John, 
however,  did  nothing  to  improve  his  health, 
and  he  returned  much  shattered.  After  a  time 
a  numbness  in  the  left  arm  excited  fear  of 
paralysis,  and  he  became  dangerously  ill.  It 
is  probable,  indeed,  that  nothing  but  the  skill 
and  unwearied  attention  of  Mr.  John  Marshall 
saved  his  life  then,  as  it  had  done  upon  several 
previous  occasions.  Such  of  his  friends  as 
were  then  in  London — W.  B.  Scott,  Burne 
Jones,  Leyland,  F.  Shields,  Mr.  Dunn,  and 
others — feeling  the  greatest  alarm,  showed  him 
every  affectionate  attention,  and  spared  no 
effort  to  preserve  a  life  so  precious  and  so 
beloved.  Mr.  Seddon  having  placed  at  his 
disposal  West  Cliff  Bungalow,  Birchington-on- 

69 


70 

Sea,  he  went  thither,  accompanied  by  his 
mother  and  sister  and  Mr.  Hall  Caine,  about 
nine  weeks  since,  but  received  no  benefit  from 
the  change,  and,  gradually  sinking  from  a 
complication  of  disorders,  he  died  on  Sunday 
last  at  10  P.M. 

Were  I  even  competent  to  enter  upon  the 
discussion  of  Rossetti's  gifts  as  a  poet  and  as  a 
painter,  it  would  not  be  possible  to  do  so  here 
and  at  this  moment.  That  the  quality  of 
romantic  imagination  informs  with  more  vitality 
his  work  than  it  can  be  said  to  inform  the  work 
of  any  of  his  contemporaries  was  recognized  at 
first  by  the  few,  and  is  now  (judging  from  the 
great  popularity  of  his  last  volume  of  poetry) 
being  recognized  by  the  many.  And  the  same, 
I  think,  may  be  said  of  his  painting.  Those 
who  had  the  privilege  of  a  personal  acquaint- 
ance with  him  knew  how  "  of  imagination  all 
compact  "  he  was.  Imagination,  indeed,  was 
at  once  his  blessing  and  his  bane.  To  see  too 
vividly — to  love  too  intensely — to  suffer  and 
enjoy  too  acutely — is  the  doom,  no  doubt,  of 
all  those  "  lost  wanderers  from  Arden  "  who, 
according  to  the  Rosicrucian  story,  sing  the 
world's  songs ;  and  to  Rossetti  this  applies 
more,  perhaps,  than  to  most  poets.  And  when 
we  consider  that  the  one  quality  in  all  poetry 
which  really  gives  it  an  endurance  outlasting 
the  generation  of  its  birth  is  neither  music  nor 
colour,  nor  even  intellectual  substance,  but  the 


DANTE    GABRIEL    ROSSETTI 

l"'rom  a  crayon-drawing  by  himself  reproduced  by  the  hind  permission  i\f 
Mr.  It'.  .!/.  Kossetti 


DANTE   GABRIEL    ROSSETTI        71 

clearness  of  the  seeing ;  the  living  breath  of 
imagination — the  very  qualities,  in  short,  for 
which  such  poems  as  '  Sister  Helen  '  and  '  Rose 
Mary '  are  so  conspicuous — we  are  driven  to 
the  conclusion  that  Rossetti's  poetry  has  a  long 
and  enduring  future  before  it. 

A  life  more  devoted  to  literature  and  art  than 
his  it  is  impossible  to  imagine.     Gabriel  Charles 
Dante    Rossetti    was    born    at    38,    Charlotte 
Street,  Portland  Place,  London,  on  the  I2th  of 
May,  1828.     He  was  the  first  son  and  second 
child  of  Gabriele  Rossetti,  the  patriotic  poet, 
who,  born  at  Vasto  in  the  Abruzzi,  settled  in 
Naples,  and  took  an  active  part  in  extorting 
from   the   Neapolitan   king   Ferdinand   I.   the 
constitution  granted  in  1820,  which  constitution 
being   traitorously   cancelled   by   the   king   in 
1821,   Rossetti  had  to  escape  for  his  life  to 
Malta  with  various  other  persecuted  constitu- 
tionalists.    From  Malta  Gabriele  Rossetti  went 
to  England  about  1823,  where  he  married  in 
1826    Frances    Polidori,    daughter    of   Alfieri's 
secretary  and  sister  of  Byron's  Dr.   Polidori. 
He    became    Professor    of    Italian    in    King's 
College,    London,    became   also   prominent    as 
a  commentator  on  Dante,  and  died  in  April, 
1854.     His   children,    four   in   number — Maria 
Francesca,  Dante  Gabriel,  William  Michael,  and 
Christina  Georgina — all  turned  to  literature  or 
to  art,   or  to  both,   and  all  became  famous. 
There  can,  indeed,  be  no  doubt  that  the  Rossetti 


72  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

family  will  hold  a  position  quite  unique  in  the 
literary  and  artistic  annals  of  our  time. 

Young  Rossetti  was  first  sent  to  the  private 
school  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Paul  hi  Foley  Street, 
Portland  Place,  where  he  remained,  however, 
for  only  three  quarters  of  a  year,  from  the 
autumn  of  1835  to  the  summer  of  1836.  He 
next  went  to  King's  College  School  in  the 
autumn  of  1836,  where  he  remained  till  the 
summer  of  1843,  having  reached  the  fourth 
class,  then  conducted  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Framley. 

Having  from  early  childhood  shown  a  strong 
propensity  for  drawing  and  painting,  which 
had  thus  been  always  regarded  as  his  future 
profession,  he  now  left  school  for  ever  and 
received  no  more  school  learning.  In  Latin  he 
was  already  fairly  proficient  for  his  age  ;  French 
he  knew  well ;  he  had  spoken  Italian  from 
childhood,  and  had  some  German  lessons  about 
1844-5.  On  leaving  school  he  went  at  once  to 
the  Art  Academy  of  Gary  (previously  called 
Sass's)  near  Bedford  Square,  and  thence  ob- 
tained admission  to  the  Royal  Academy  Antique 
School  in  1844  or  1845.  To  the  Royal  Academy 
Life  School  he  never  went,  and  he  was  a  some- 
what negligent  art  student,  but  always  regarded 
as  one  who  had  a  future  before  him. 

In  1849  Rossetti  exhibited  '  The  Girlhood  of 
the  "\  irgin '  in  the  so-called  Free  Exhibition 
or  Portland  Gallery.  The  artist  who  had 
perhaps  the  strongest  influence  upon  Rossetti's 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI        73 

early  tastes  was  Ford  Madox  Brown,  who, 
however,  refused  from  the  first  to  join  the 
Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood  on  the  ground 
that  coteries  had  in  modern  art  no  proper 
function.  Rossetti  was  deeply  impressed  with 
the  power  and  designing  faculty  displayed  by 
Madox  Brown's  cartoons  exhibited  in  West- 
minster Hall.  When  Rossetti  began  serious 
work  as  a  painter  he  thought  of  Madox  Brown 
as  the  one  man  from  whom  he  would  willingly 
receive  practical  guidance,  and  wrote  to  him 
at  random.  From  this  time  Madox  Brown 
became  his  intimate  friend  and  artistic  monitor. 
In  painting,  however,  Rossetti  was  during 
this  time  exercising  only  half  his  genius.  From 
his  childhood  it  became  evident  that  he  was  a 
poet.  At  the  age  of  five  he  wrote  a  sort  of 
play  called  '  The  Slave,'  which,  as  may  be 
imagined,  showed  no  noteworthy  characteristic 
save  precocity.  This  was  followed  by  the 
poem  called  '  Sir  Hugh  Heron/  which  was 
written  about  1844,  and  some  translations  of 
German  poetry.  '  The  Blessed  Damozel '  and 
'  Sister  Helen '  were  produced  in  their  original 
form  so  early  as  1846  or  1847.  The  latter  of 
these  has  undergone  more  modifications  than 
any  other  first-class  poem  of  our  time.  To  take 
even  the  new  edition  of  the  '  Poems '  which 
appeared  last  year  [1881],  the  stanzas  introduc- 
ing the  wife  of  the  luckless  hero  appealing  to 
the  sorceress  for  mercy  are  so  important  in  the 


74  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

glamour  they  shed  back  over  the  stanzas  that 
have  gone  before,  that  their  introduction  may 
almost  be  characterized  as  a  rewriting  of  every 
previous  line. 

The  translations  from  the  early  Italian  poets 
also  began  as  far  back  as  1845  or  1846,  and  may 
have  been  mainly  completed  by  1849.  Rossetti's 
gifts  as  a  translator  were,  no  doubt,  of  the 
highest.  And  this  arose  from  his  deep  sym- 
pathy with  literature  as  a  medium  of  human 
expression  :  he  could  enter  into  the  tempera- 
ments of  other  writers,  and  by  sympathy 
criticize  the  literary  form  from  the  author's 
own  inner  standpoint,  supposing  always  that 
there  was  a  certain  racial  kinship  with  the 
author.  Many  who  write  well  themselves  have 
less  sympathy  with  the  expressional  forms 
adopted  by  other  writers  than  is  displayed  by 
men  who  have  neither  the  impulse  nor  the  power 
to  write  themselves.  But  this  sympathy  be- 
trayed him  sometimes  into  a  free  rendering  of 
locutions  such  as  a  translator  should  be  chary 
of  indulging  in.  Materials  for  a  volume  accu- 
mulated slowly,  but  all  the  important  portions 
of  the  *  Poems '  published  in  1870  had  been 
in  existence  some  years  before  that  date.  The 
prose  story  of  '  Hand  and  Soul '  was  also 
written  as  early  as  1848  or  1849. 

In  the  spring  of  1860  he  married  Elizabeth 
Eleanor  Siddall,  who  being  very  beautiful  was 
constantly  painted  and  drawn  by  him.  She 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI       75 

had  one  still-born  child  in  1861,  and  died  in 
February,  1862.  He  felt  her  death  very  acutely, 
and  for  a  time  ceased  to  write  or  to  take  any 
interest  in  his  own  poetry.  Like  Prospero, 
indeed,  he  literally  buried  his  wand,  but  for  a 
time  only.  From  this  time  to  his  death  he 
continued  to  produce  pictures,  all  of  them 
showing,  as  far  as  technical  skill  goes,  an 
unfaltering  advance  in  his  art. 

Yet  wonderful  as  was  Rossetti  as  an  artist 
and  poet,  he  was  still  more  wonderful,  I  think, 
as  a  man.  The  chief  characteristic  of  his 
conversation  was  an  incisiveness  so  perfect  and 
clear  as  to  have  often  the  pleasurable  surprise 
of  wit.  It  is  so  well  known  that  Rossetti  has 
been  for  a  long  time  the  most  retired  man  of 
genius  of  our  day,  and  so  many  absurd  causes 
for  this  retirement  have  been  spoken  of,  that 
there  is  nothing  indecorous  in  the  true  cause 
of  it  being  made  public  by  one  who  of  late  years 
has  known  more  of  him,  perhaps,  than  has  any 
other  person.  About  1868  the  curse  of  the 
artistic  and  poetic  temperament — insomnia — 
attacked  him,  and  one  of  the  most  distressing 
effects  of  insomnia  is  a  nervous  shrinking  from 
personal  contact  with  any  save  a  few  intimate 
friends.  This  peculiar  kind  of  nervousness  may 
be  aggravated  by  the  use  of  sleeping  draughts, 
and  in  his  case  was  thus  aggravated. 

But,  although  Rossetti  lived  thus  secluded, 
he  did  not  lose  the  affectionate  regard  of  the 


76  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

illustrious  men  with  whom  he  started  in  his 
artistic  life.  Nor,  assuredly,  did  he  deserve  to 
lose  it,  for  no  man  ever  lived,  I  think,  who  was 
so  generous  as  he  in  sympathizing  with  other 
men's  work,  save  only  when  the  cruel  fumes  of 
chloral  turned  him  against  everything.  And  his 
sympathy  was  as  wide  as  generous.  It  was 
only  necessary  to  mention  the  name  of  Leighton 
or  Millais  or  Madox  Brown  or  Burne  Jones  or 
G.  F.  Watts,  or,  indeed,  of  any  contemporary 
painter,  to  get  from  him  a  glowing  disquisition 
upon  the  merits  of  each — a  disquisition  full  of 
the  subtlest  distinctions,  and  illuminated  by 
the  brilliant  lights  of  his  matchless  fancy.  And 
it  was  the  same  in  poetry. 

But  those  who  loved  Rossetti  (that  is  to 
say,  those  who  knew  him)  can  realize  how 
difficult  it  is  for  me,  a  friend,  to  pursue  just 
now  such  reminiscences  as  these. 


I. 

IN  his  preface  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  says  : — 
"  I  have  not  attempted  to  write  a 
biographical  account  of  my  brother,  nor  to 
estimate  the  range  or  value  of  his  powers  and 
performances  in  fine  art  and  in  literature.  I 
agree  with  those  who  think  that  a  brother  is  not 
the  proper  person  to  undertake  a  work  of  this 
sort.  An  outsider  can  do  it  dispassionately, 
though  with  imperfect  knowledge  of  the  facts  ; 
a  friend  can  do  it  with  mastery,  and  without 
much  undue  bias ;  but  a  brother,  however 
equitably  he  may  address  himself  to  the  task, 
cannot  perform  it  so  as  to  secure  the  prompt 
and  cordial  assent  of  his  readers." 
These  words  will  serve  as  a  good  example  of 
the  dignified  modesty  which  is  a  characteristic  of 
Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti's,  and  is  one  of  the  best 
features  of  this  volume.*  In  these  days  of 
empty  pretence  it  is  always  refreshing  to  come 
upon  a  page  written  in  the  spirit  of  scholarly 
self-suppression  which  informs  every  line  this 
patient  and  admirable  critic  writes.  And  as 
to  the  interesting  question  glanced  at  in  the 
passage  above  quoted,  though  the  contents  of 
this  volume  will,  no  doubt,  form  valuable 
material  for  the  future  biography  of  Rossetti, 

*  'Dante   Gabriel    Rossetti,  as   Designer  and  Writer.' 
Notes  by  William  Michael  Rossetti.     (Cassell  and  Co.) 

77 


78  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

we  wonder  whether  the  time  is  even  yet  at 
hand  when  that  biography,  whether  written  by 
brother,  by  friend,  or  by  outsider,  is  needed. 
That  mysterious  entity  "  the  public,"  would, 
no  doubt,  like  to  get  one  ;  but  we  have  always 
shared  Rossetti's  own  opinion  that  a  man  of 
genius  is  no  more  the  property  of  the  "  public  " 
than  is  any  private  gentleman  ;  and  we  have 
always  felt  with  him  that  the  prevalence  in  our 
time  of  the  opposite  opinion  has  fashioned  so 
intolerable  a  yoke  for  the  neck  of  any  one  who 
has  had  the  misfortune  to  pass  from  the  sweet 
paradise  of  obscurity  into  the  vulgar  purgatory 
of  Fame,  that  it  almost  behoves  a  man  of  genius 
to  avoid,  if  he  can,  passing  into  that  purgatory 
at  all. 

Can  any  biography,  by  whomsoever  written, 
be  other  than  inchoate  and  illusory — nay,  can 
it  fail  to  be  fraught  with  danger  to  the  memory 
of  the  dead,  with  danger  to  the  peace  of  the 
living,  until  years  have  fully  calmed  the  air 
around  the  dead  man's  grave  ?  So  long  as  the 
man  to  be  portrayed  cannot  be  separated  from 
his  surroundings,  so  long  as  his  portrait  cannot 
be  fully  and  honestly  limned  without  peril  to 
the  peace  of  those  among  whom  he  moved — in 
a  word,  so  long  as  there  remains  any  throb  of 
vitality  in  those  delicate  filaments  of  social  life 
by  which  he  was  enlinked  to  those  with  whom  he 
played  his  part — that  brother,  or  that  friend,  or 
that  outsider  who  shall  attempt  the  portraiture 


DANTE   GABRIEL    ROSSETTI        79 

must  feel  what  heavy  responsibilities  are  his — 
must  not  forget  that  with  him  to  trip  is  to  sin 
against  the  head.  And  how  shall  he  decide 
when  the  time  has  at  last  come  for  making  the 
attempt  ?  Before  the  incidents  of  a  man's  life 
can  be  exploited  without  any  risk  of  mischief, 
how  much  time  should  elapse  ?  "A  month," 
say  the  publishers,  each  one  of  whom  runs  his 
own  special  "  biographical  series,"  and  keeps 
his  own  special  bevy  of  recording  angels  writing 
against  time  and  against  each  other.  '  Thirty 
years,"  said  one  whose  life-wisdom  was  so 
perfect  as  to  be  in  a  world  like  ours  almost  an 
adequate  substitute  for  the  morality  he  lacked — 
Talleyrand. 

Of  all  forms  of  literary  art  biography  demands 
from  the  artist  not  only  the  greatest  courage, 
but  also  the  happiest  combination  of  the  highest 
gifts.  JTo  succeed  in  painting  the  portrait  of 
Achilles  or  of  Priam,  of  Hamlet  or  of  Othello, 
may  be  difficult,  but  is  it  as  difficult  as  to 
succeed  in  painting  the  portrait  of  Browning 
or  Rossetti  ?  Surely  not.  In  the  one  case  an 
intense  dramatic  imagination  is  needed,  and 
nothing  more.  If  Homer's  Achaian  and  Trojan 
heroes  were  falsely  limned,  not  they,  but 
Homer's  art,  would  suffer  the  injury.  If  for 
the  purposes  of  art  the  poet  unduly  exalted  this 
one  or  unduly  abased  that — if  he  misread  one 
incident  in  the  mythical  life  of  Achilles,  and 
another  in  the  mythical  life  of  Hector — he  did 


80  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

wrong  to  his  art  undoubtedly,  but  none  to  the 
memory  of  a  dead  man,  and  none  to  the  peace  of 
a  living  one.  But  with  him  who  would  paint 
the  portrait  of  Browning  or  Rossetti  how  differ- 
ent is  the  case !  Although  he  requires  the 
poet's  vision  before  he  can  paint  a  living  picture 
of  his  subject,  the  task  he  has  set  himself  to  do 
is  something  more  than  artistic  :  before  every- 
thing else  it  is  fiduciary. 

A  trustee  whose  trust  fund  is  biographical 
truth,  he  has,  after  collecting  and  marshalling 
all  the  facts  that  come  to  his  hand,  to  decide 
what  is  truth  as  indicated  by  those  generalized 
facts.  But  having  done  this,  he  has  to  decide 
what  is  the  proper  time  for  giving  the  world  the 
truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the 
truth — what  is  the  proper  time  ?  In  the  bio- 
grapher's relation  to  the  dead  man  on  the  one- 
hand  and  to  the  public  on  the  other  should  he 
be  so  unhappy  as  to  forget  that  time  is  of  the 
very  "  essence  of  the  contract " — should  he 
forget  that  so  inwoven  is  human  life  that  truth 
spoken  at  the  wrong  moment  may  be  a  greater 
mischief -worker  than  error — he  may,  if  con- 
scientious, have  to  remember  that  forget  fulness 
of  his  during  the  remainder  of  his  days.  He 
who  thinks  that  truth  may  not  be  sometimes  as 
mischievous  as  a  pestilence  knows  but  little  of 
this  mysterious  and  wonderful  net  of  human 
life.  But  if  this  is  so  with  regard  to  truth,  how 
much  more  is  it  so  with  regard  to  mere  matter 


DANTE    GABRIEL    ROSSETTI        81 

of  fact  ?  Fact-worship,  document-worship,  is 
at  once  the  crowning  folly  and  the  crowning 
vice  of  our  time.  To  mistake  a  fact  for  a  truth, 
and  to  give  the  world  that ;  to  throw  facts  about 
and  documents  about  heedless  of  the  mischief 
they  may  work — wronging  the  dead  and  wrong- 
ing the  living — this  is  actually  paraded  as  a 
virtue  in  these  days. 

Here  is  a  case  in  point.  Down  to  the  very 
last  moment  of  his  life  Rossetti's  feeling  towards 
his  great  contemporary  Tennyson  was  that  of 
the  deepest  admiration,  and  yet  what  says  the 
documentary  evidence  as  given  to  the  world 
by  Rossetti's  brother  ?  It  shows  that  Rossetti 
used  an  extremely  unpleasant  phrase  concerning 
a  letter  from  Tennyson  acknowledging  the 
receipt  of  Rossetti's  first  volume  of  poems  in 
1870.  Those  who  have  heard  Tennyson  speak 
of  Rossetti  know  that  to  use  this  phrase  in 
relation  to  any  letter  of  his  dealing  with 
Rossetti's  poetry  was  to  misunderstand  it. 
Yet  here  are  the  unpleasant  words  of  a  hasty 
mood,  "  rather  shabby,"  in  print.  And  why  ? 
Because  the  public  has  become  so  demoralized 
that  its  feast  of  facts,  its  feast  of  documents  it 
must  have,  come  what  will.  But  even  sup- 
posing that  the  public  had  any  rights  whatsoever 
in  regard  to  a  man  of  genius,  which  we  deny, 
what  are  letters  as  indications  of  a  man's 
character  ?  Of  all  modes  of  expression  is  not 

the    epistolary    mode    that    in    which    man's 

o 


82  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

instinct  for  using  language  "  to  disguise  his 
thought "  is  most  likely  to  exercise  itself  ? 
There  is  likely  to  be  far  more  deep  sincerity  in 
a  sonnet  than  in  a  letter.  It  is  no  exaggeration 
to  say  that  the  common  courtesies  of  life  demand 
a  certain  amount  of  what  is  called  "  blarney  " 
in  a  letter — especially  in  an  eminent  man's 
letter — which  would  ruin  a  sonnet.  And  this 
must  be  steadily  borne  in  mind  at  a  time  like 
ours,  when  private  letters  are  bought  and  sold 
like  any  other  article  of  merchandise,  not  only 
immediately  after  a  man's  death,  but  during 
his  lifetime. 

With  regard  to  literary  men,  their  letters  in 
former  times  were  simply  artistic  compositions  ; 
hence  as  indications  of  character  they  must  be 
judged  by  the  same  canons  as  literary  essays 
would  be  judged.  In  both  cases  the  writer 
had  full  space  and  full  time  to  qualify  his  state- 
ments of  opinion  ;  in  both  cases  he  was  without 
excuse  for  throwing  out  anything  heedlessly. 
Not  only  in  Walpole's  case  and  Gray's,  but  also 
in  Charles  Lamb's,  we  apply  the  same  rules  of 
criticism  to  the  letters  as  we  apply  to  the 
published  utterances  that  appeared  in  the 
writer's  lifetime.  But  now,  when  letters  are 
just  the  hurried  expression  of  the  moment, 
when  ill-considered  things — often  rash  things — 
are  said  which  either  in  literary  compositions  or 
in  conversation  would  have  been,  if  said  at  all, 
greatly  qualified — the  greatest  injustice  that 


DANTE   GABRIEL    ROSSETTI        83 

can  be  done  to  a  writer  is  to  print  his  letters 
indiscriminately.  Especially  is  this  the  case 
with  Rossetti.  All  who  knew  him  speak  of  him 
as  being  a  superb  critic,  and  a  superb  critic  he 
was.  But  his  printed  letters  show  nothing  of 
the  kind.  On  literary  subjects  they  are  often 
full  of  over-statement  and  of  biased  judgment. 
Here  is  the  explanation  :  in  conversation  he 
had  a  way  of  perpetrating  a  brilliant  critical 
paradox  for  the  very  purpose  of  qualifying  it, 
turning  it  about,  colouring  it  by  the  lights  of 
his  wonderful  fancy,  until  at  last  it  became 
something  quite  different  from  the  original 
paradox,  and  full  of  truth  and  wisdom.  But 
when  such  a  paradox  went  off  in  a  letter,  there 
it  remained  unqualified  ;  and  they  who,  not 
having  known  him,  scoff  at  his  friends  who  claim 
for  him  the  honours  of  a  great  critic,  seem  to 
scoff  with  reason. 

No  one  was  more  conscious  of  the  treachery 
of  letters  than  was  Rossetti  himself.  Com- 
paratively late  in  his  life  he  realized  what  all 
eminent  men  would  do  well  to  realize,  that 
owing  to  the  degradation  of  public  taste,  which 
cries  out  for  more  personal  gossip  and  still  more 
every  day,  the  time  has  fully  come  when  every 
man  of  mark  must  consider  the  rights  of  his 
friends — when  it  behoves  every  man  who  has 
had  the  misfortune  to  pass  into  fame  to  burn 
all  letters  ;  and  he  began  the  holocaust  that 
duty  to  friendship  demanded  of  him.  But  the 


84  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

work  of  reading  through  such  a  correspondence 
as  his  in  order  to  see  what  letters  must  be  pre- 
served from  the  burning  took  more  time  and 
more  patience  than  he  had  contemplated,  and 
the  destruction  did  not  progress  further  than 
to  include  the  letters  of  the  early  sixties. 
Business  letters  it  was,  of  course,  necessary  to 
preserve,  and  very  properly  it  is  from  these  that 
Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  has  mainly  quoted. 

The  volume  is  divided  into  two  parts  :  first, 
documents  relating  to  the  production  of  certain 
of  Rossetti's  pictures  and  poems  ;  and  second, 
a  prose  paraphrase  of  '  The  House  of  Life/ 

The  documents  consist  of  abstracts  of  and 
extracts  from  such  portions  of  Rossetti's  corre- 
spondence as  have  fallen  into  his  brother's 
hands  as  executor.  Dealing  as  they  necessarily 
do  with  those  complications  of  prices  and  those 
involved  commissions  for  which  Rossetti's 
artistic  career  was  remarkable,  there  is  a 
commercial  air  about  the  first  portion  of  the 
book  which  some  will  think  out  of  harmony  with 
their  conception  of  the  painter,  about  whom 
there  used  to  be  such  a  mysterious  interest  until 
much  writing  about  him  had  brought  him  into 
the  light  of  common  day.  In  future  years  a 
summary  so  accurate  and  so  judicious  as  this 
will  seem  better  worth  making  than  it,  perhaps, 
seems  at  the  present  moment ;  for  Mr.  W.  M. 
Rossetti's  love  of  facts  is  accompanied  by  an 
equally  strong  love  of  making  an  honest  state- 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI        85 

ment  of  facts — a  tabulated  statement,  if  possi- 
ble ;  and  no  one  writing  of  Rossetti  need 
hesitate  about  following  his  brother  to  the  last 
letter  and  to  the  last  figure. 

To  be  precise  and  perspicuous  is,  he  hints  in 
his  preface,  better  than  to  be  graphic  and 
entertaining  ;  and  we  entirely  agree  with  him, 
especially  when  the  subject  discussed  is  Rossetti, 
about  whom  so  many  fancies  that  are  neither 
precise  nor  perspicuous  are  current.  Still,  to 
read  about  this  picture  being  offered  to  one 
buyer  and  that  to  another,  and  rejected  or 
accepted  at  a  greatly  reduced  price  after  much 
chaffering,  is  not,  we  will  confess,  exhilarating 
reading  to  those  to  whom  Rossetti's  pictures 
are  also  poems.  It  does  not  conduce  to  the 
happiness  of  his  admirers  to  think  of  such 
works  being  produced  under  such  prosaic  con- 
ditions. One  buyer — a  most  worthy  man,  to  be 
sure,  and  a  true  friend  of  Rossetti's,  but  full  of 
that  British  superstition  about  the  saving  grace 
of  clothes  which  is  so  wonderful  a  revelation 
to  the  pensive  foreigner — had  to  be  humoured 
in  his  craze  against  the  nude.  After  having 
painted  a  beautiful  partly-draped  Gretchen 
(which,  we  may  remark  in  passing,  had  no 
relation,  as  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  supposes,  to  the 
Marguerite  alluded  to  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Graham 
in  1870)  from  a  new  model  whose  characteristics 
were  a  superb  bosom  and  arms,  he,  Rossetti, 
was  obliged  to  consent  to  conceal  the  best 
portions  of  the  picture  under  drapery. 


86  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

That  this  was  a  matter  of  great  and  peculiar 
vexation  to  him  may  be  supposed  when  it  is 
remembered  that  unequalled  as  had  been  his 
good  fortune  in  finding  fine  face-models  (ladies 
of  position  and  culture,  and  often  of  extra- 
ordinary beauty),  he  had  in  the  matter  of  figure- 
models  been  most  unlucky.  And  this,  added 
to  his  slight  knowledge  of  anatomy,  made  all 
his  nude  pictures  undesirable  save  those  few 
painted  from  the  beautiful  girl  who  stood  for 
'  The  Spirit  of  the  Rainbow '  and  '  Forced 
Music.'  What  his  work  from  the  nude  suffered 
from  this  is  incalculable,  as  may  be  seen  in  the 
crayon  called  '  Ligeia  Siren/  a  naked  siren 
playing  on  a  kind  of  lute,  which  Rossetti 
described  as  "  certainly  one  of  his  best  things." 
The  beauty  and  value  of  a  crayon  which  for 
weird  poetry — especially  in  the  eyes — must  be 
among  Rossetti's  masterpieces  are  ruined  by 
the  drawing  of  the  breasts. 

The  most  interesting  feature  of  the  book, 
however,  is  not  that  which  deals  with  the  prices 
Rossetti  got  for  his  pictures,  but  that  which 
tells  the  reader  the  place  where  and  the  con- 
ditions under  which  they  were  painted  ;  and 
no  portion  of  the  book  is  more  interesting  than 
that  which  relates  to  the  work  done  at 
Kelmscott : — 

"  At  the  beginning  of  this  year  1874  Rossetti 
was  again  occupied  with  the  picture  which  he 
had  commenced  in  the  preceding  spring,  entitled, 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI        87 

'  The  Bower  Maiden  ' — a  girl  in  a  room  with  a 
pot  of  marigolds  and  a  black  cat.  It  was 
painted  from  '  little  Annie  '  (a  cottage-girl  and 
house  assistant  at  Kelmscott),  and  it  '  goes  on  ' 
(to  quote  the  words  of  one  of  his  letters)  '  like  a 
house  on  fire.  This  is  the  only  kind  of  picture 
one  ought  to  do — just  copying  the  materials,  and 
no  more  :  all  others  are  too  much  trouble.'  It 
is  not  difficult  to  understand  that  the  painter  of 
a  '  Proserpine '  and  a  '  Ghirlandata '  would 
occasionally  feel  the  luxury  of  a  mood  intellec- 
tually lazy,  and  would  be  minded  to  give  voice 
to  it — as  in  this  instance — in  terms  wilfully 
extreme  ;  keeping  his  mental  eye  none  the  less 
steadily  directed  to  a  '  Roman  Widow '  or  a 
'  Blessed  Damozel '  in  the  near  future.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  my  brother  painted  very  few 
things,  at  any  stage  of  his  career,  as  mere 
representations  of  reality,  unimbued  by  some 
inventive  or  ideal  meaning  :  in  the  rare  instances 
when  he  did  so,  he  naturally  felt  an  indolent 
comfort,  and  made  no  scruple  of  putting  the 
feeling  into  words — highly  suitable  for  being 
taken  cum  grano  salis.  Nothing  was  more 
alien  from  his  nature  or  habit  than  '  tall  talk  ' 
of  any  kind  about  his  aims,  aspirations,  or 
performances.  It  was  into  his  work — not  into 
his  utterances  about  his  work — that  he  infused 
the  higher  and  deeper  elements  of  his  spirit. 
'  The  Bower  Maiden '  was  finished  early  in 
February,  and  sold  to  Mr.  Graham  for  682/., 
after  it  had  been  offered  to  Mr.  Leyland  at  a 
rather  higher  figure,  and  declined.  It  has 
also  passed  under  the  names  of  '  Fleurs  de 
Marie,'  '  Marigolds,'  and  '  The  Gardener's 
Daughter.'  After  '  The  Bower  Maiden  '  had 


88  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

been  disposed  of,  other  work  was  taken  up — 
more  especially  '  The  Roman  Widow/  bearing 
the  alternative  title  of '  Dis  Manibus/  which  was 
in  an  advanced  stage  by  the  month  of  May,  and 
was  completed  in  June  or  July.     It  was  finished 
with  little  or  no  glazing.     The  Roman  widow  is 
a  lady  still  youthful,   in   a  grey   fawn-tinted 
drapery,  with  a  musical  instrument  in  each 
hand  ;   she  is  in  the  sepulchral  chamber  of  her 
husband,  whose  stone  urn  appears  in  the  back- 
ground.    I  possess  the  antique  urn  which  my 
brother  procured,  and  which  he  used  for  the 
painting.     For  graceful  simplicity,  and  for  depth 
of  earnest  but  not  strained  sentiment,  he  never, 
I  think,  exceeded  '  The  Roman  Widow.'     The 
two  instruments  seem  to  repeat  the  two  mottoes 
on  the  urn,  '  Ave  Domine — Vale  Domine.'     The 
head  was  painted  from  Miss  Wilding,  already 
mentioned  ;  but  it  seems  to  me  partly  associated 
with  the  type  of  Mrs.  Stillman's  face  as  weil. 
There  are  many  roses  in  this  picture — both  wild 
and  garden  roses  ;  they  kept  the  artist  waiting  a 
little  after  the  work  was  otherwise  finished.     '  I 
really  think  it  looks  well/  he  wrote  on  one 
occasion  ;    '  its  fair  luminous  colour  seems  to 
melt  into  the  gold  frame  (which  has  only  just 
come)  like  a  part  of  it/     He  feared  that  the 
picture  might  be  '  too  severe  and  tragic  '  for 
some  tastes  ;  but  could  add  (not,  perhaps,  with 
undue  confidence),  '  I  don't  think  Gericault  or 
Regnault  would  have  quite  scorned  it/  " 

The  magnificent  design  here  alluded  to,  '  Dis 
Manibus/  entirely  suggested  by  the  urn,  which 
had  somewhat  come  into  his  possession  (pro- 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI        89 

bably  through  Howell),  and  also  '  The  Bower 
Maiden/  suggested  by  his  accidentally  seeing 
a  pretty  cottage-child  lifting  some  marigolds  to 
a  shelf,  formed  part  of  the  superb  work  produced 
by  Rossetti  during  his  long  retirement  at 
Kelmscott  Manor — that  period  never  before 
recorded,  which  has  at  this  very  moment  been 
brought  into  prominence  by  his  friend  Dr. 
Hake's  sonnet-sequence  '  The  New  Day,'  just 
published.  As  far  as  literary  and  artistic  work 
goes,  it  was,  perhaps,  the  richest  period  of 
his  life  ;  and  that  it  was  also  one  of  the  happiest 
is  clear  not  only  from  his  own  words,  but  also 
from  the  following  testimony  of  Dr.  Hake,  who 
saw  much  of  him  there  : — 

O,  happy  days  with  him  who  once  so  loved  us ! 

We  loved  as  brothers,  with  a  single  heart, 
The  man  whose  iris-woven  pictures  moved  us 

From  nature  to  her  blazoned  shadow — Art. 
How  often  did  we  trace  the  nestling-  Thames 

From  humblest  waters  on  his  course  of  might, 
Down  where  the  weir  the  bursting  current  stems — 

There  sat  till  evening  grew  to  balmy  night, 
Veiling  the  weir  whose  roar  recalled  the  Strand 

Where  we  had  listened  to  the  wave-lipped  sea, 
That  seemed  to  utter  plaudits  while  we  planned 

Triumphal  labours  of  the  day  to  be. 

It  was  at  Kelmscott,  in  the  famous  tapestried 
room,  that  besides  painting  the  '  Proserpine/ 
'  The  Roman  Widow/  &c.,  he  wrote  many  of 
his  later  poems,  including  '  Rose  Mary/ 

Considering  how  deep  is  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti's 
affection  for  his  brother's  memory,  and  how 
great  is  his  admiration  for  his  brother's  work, 


90  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

it  is  remarkable  how  judicial  is  his  mind  when 
writing  about  him.  This  is  what  he  says  about 
the  much  discussed  '  Venus  Astarte  ' : — 

"  Into  the  '  Venus  Astarte  '  he  had  put  his 
utmost  intensity  of  thinking,  feeling,  and  method 
— he  had  aimed  to  make  it  equally  strong  in 
abstract  sentiment  and  in  physical  grandeur — 
an  ideal  of  the  mystery  of  beauty,  offering  a  sort 
of  combined  quintessence  of  what  he  had  en- 
deavoured in  earlier  years  to  embody  in  the 
two  several  types  of  '  Sibylla  Palmifera  '  and 
'  Lilith/  or  (as  he  ultimately  named  them  in  the 
respective  sonnets) '  Soul's  Beauty  '  and '  Body's 
Beauty/  It  may  be  well  to  remark  that,  by 
the  time  when  he  completed  the '  Venus  Astarte/ 
or  '  Astarte  Syriaca/  he  had  got  into  a  more 
austere  feeling  than  of  old  with  regard  to  colour 
and  chiaroscuro  ;  and  the  charm  of  the  picture 
has,  I  am  aware,  been  less,  to  many  critics  and 
spectators  of  the  work,  than  he  would  have 
deemed  to  be  its  due,  as  compared  with  some 
of  his  other  performances  of  more  obvious  and 
ostensible  attraction." 

Though  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  is  right  in  saying 
that  it  was  not  till  the  beginning  of  1877  that 
this  remarkable  picture  was  brought  to  a 
conclusion,  the  main  portions  were  done  during 
that  long  sojourn  at  Bognor  in  1876-7,  which 
those  who  have  written  about  Rossetti  have 
hitherto  left  unrecorded.  Having  fallen  into 
ill  health  after  his  return  to  London  from 
Kelmscott,  he  was  advised  to  go  to  the  seaside, 
and  a  large  house  at  Bognor  was  finally  selected. 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI        91 

No  doubt  one  reason  why  the  preference  was 
given  to  Bognor  was  the  fact  that  Blake's 
cottage  at  Felpham  was  close  by,  for  business- 
like and  unbusiness-like  qualities  were  strangely 
mingled  in  Rossetti's  temperament,  and  it  was 
generally  some  sentiment  or  unpractical  fancy 
of  this  kind  that  brought  about  Rossetti's 
final  decision  upon  anything.  Blake's  name 
was  with  him  still  a  word  to  charm  with,  and 
he  was  surprised  to  find,  on  the  first  pilgrimage 
of  himself  and  his  friends  to  the  cottage,  that 
scarcely  a  person  in  the  neighbourhood  knew 
what  Blake  it  was  that  "  the  Londoners  "  were 
inquiring  about. 

To  the  secluded  house  at  Bognor — a  house 
so  surrounded  by  trees  and  shrubs  that  the 
murmur  of  the  waves  mingling  with  the  whispers 
of  the  leaves  seemed  at  one  moment  the  sea's 
voice,  and  at  another  the  voice  of  the  earth — 
Rossetti  took  not  only  the  cartoon  of  the 
'  Astarte  Syriaca/  but  also  the  most  peculiar 
of  all  his  pictures,  '  The  Blessed  Damozel/ 
which  had  long  lain  in  an  incomplete  state. 
But  it  was  not  much  painting  that  he  did  at 
Bognor.  From  a  cause  he  tried  in  vain  to 
understand,  and  tried  in  vain  to  conquer,  his 
thoughts  ran  upon  poetry,  and  refused  to  fix 
themselves  upon  art.  Partly  this  might  have 
been  owing  to  the  fact  that  now,  comparatively 
late  in  life,  he  to  whom,  as  his  brother  well 
says,  "  such  words  as  sea,  ship,  and  boat  were 


92  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

generic  terms  admitting  of  little  specific  and 
still  less  of  any  individual  and  detailed  dis- 
tinction," awoke  to  the  fascination  that  the 
sea  sooner  or  later  exercises  upon  all  truly 
romantic  souls.  For  deep  as  is  the  poetry  of 
the  inland  woods,  the  Spirit  of  Romance,  if 
there  at  all,  is  there  in  hiding.  In  order  for 
that  Spirit  to  come  forth  and  take  captive  the 
soul  something  else  is  wanted  ;  howsoever  thick 
and  green  the  trees — howsoever  bright  and 
winding  the  streams — a  magical  glimmer  of 
sea-light  far  or  near  must  shine  through  the 
branches  as  they  wave. 

That  this  should  be  a  new  experience  to  so 
fine  a  poet  as  Rossetti  was  no  doubt  strange,  but 
so  it  chanced  to  be.  He  whose  talk  at  Kelm- 
scott  had  been  of  '  Blessed  Damozels '  and 
'  Roman  Widows '  and  the  like,  talked  now  of 
the  wanderings  of  Ulysses,  of  '  The  Ancient 
Mariner,'  of  '  Sir  Patrick  Spens,'  and  even  of 
'  Arthur  Gordon  Pym  '  and  '  Allan  Gordon.' 
And  on  hearing  a  friend  recite  some  tentative 
verses  on  a  great  naval  battle,  he  looked  about 
for  sea  subjects  too  ;  and  it  was  now,  and  not 
later,  as  is  generally  supposed,  that  he  really 
thought  of  the  subject  of  '  The  White  Ship,' 
a  subject  apparently  so  alien  from  his  genius. 
Every  evening  he  used  to  take  walks  on  the 
beach  for  miles  and  miles,  delighted  with  a 
beauty  that  before  had  had  no  charms  for 
him.  Still,  the  '  Astarte  Syriaca  '  did  progress, 


DANTE   GABRIEL    ROSSETTI        93 

though  slowly,  and  became  the  masterpiece 
that  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  sets  so  high  among 
his  brother's  work. 

"  From  Bognor  my  brother  returned  to  his 
house  in  Cheyne  Walk  ;  and  in  the  summer  he 
paid  a  visit  to  two  of  his  kindest  and  most 
considerate  friends,  Lord  and  Lady  Mount- 
Temple,  at  their  seat  of  Broadlands  in  Hamp- 
shire. He  executed  there  a  portrait  in  chalks 
of  Lady  Mount-Temple.  He  went  on  also  with 
the  picture  of  '  The  Blessed  Damozel.'  For  the 
head  of  an  infant  angel  which  appears  in  the 
front  of  this  picture  he  made  drawings  from 
two  children — one  being  the  baby  of  the  Rev. 
H.  C.  Hawtrey,  and  the  other  a  workhouse 
infant.  The  former  sketch  was  presented  to 
the  parents  of  the  child  and  the  latter  to  Lady 
Mount -Temple  ;  and  the  head  with  its  wings, 
was  painted  on  to  the  canvas  at  Broadlands." 

Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  omits  to  mention  that 
the  landscape  which  forms  the  predella  to 
'  The  Blessed  Damozel/  a  river  winding  in  a 
peculiarly  tortuous  course  through  the  cedars 
and  other  wide-spread  trees  of  an  English 
park,  was  taken  from  the  scenery  of  Broadlands 
— that  fairyland  of  soft  beauty  which  lived  in 
his  memory  as  it  must  needs  live  in  the  memory 
of  every  one  who  has  once  known  it.  But  the 
wonder  is  that  such  a  mass  of  solid  material  has 
been  compressed  into  so  small  a  space. 

Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti's  paraphrase  of  '  The 
House  of  Life  ' — done  with  so  much  admiration 


94  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

of  his  brother's  genius  and  affection  for  his 
memory — touches  upon  a  question  relating  to 
poetic  art  which  has  been  raised  before — 
raised  in  connexion  with  prose  renderings  of 
Homer,  Sophocles,  and  Dante  :  Are  poetry  and 
prose  so  closely  related  in  method  that  one  can 
ever  be  adequately  turned  into  the  other  ? 
Schiller  no  doubt  wrote  his  dramas  in  prose  and 
then  turned  them  into  rhetorical  verse  ;  but 
then  there  are  those  who  affirm  that  Schiller's 
rhetorical  verse  is  scarcely  poetry.  The  im- 
portance of  the  question  will  be  seen  when  we 
call  to  mind  that  if  such  a  transmutation  of 
form  were  possible,  translations  of  poetry  would 
be  possible  ;  for  though,  owing  to  the  tyrannous 
demands  of  form,  the  verse  of  one  language  can 
never  be  translated  into  the  verse  of  another,  it 
can  always  be  rendered  in  the  prose  of  another, 
only  it  then  ceases  to  be  poetry. 

That  the  intellectual,  and  even  to  some 
extent  the  emotional,  substance  of  a  poem  can 
be  seized  and  covered  by  a  prose  translation 
is  seen  in  Prof.  Jebb's  rendering  of  the  '  (Edipus 
Rex  '  ;  but,  as  we  have  before  remarked,  the 
fundamental  difference  between  imaginative 
prose  and  poetry  is  that,  while  the  one  must  be 
informed  with  intellectual  life  and  emotional 
life,  the  other  has  to  be  informed  with  both 
these  kinds  of  life,  and  with  another  life  beyond 
these — rhythmic  life.  Now,  if  we  wished  to 
show  that  rhythmic  life  is  in  poetry  the  most 


DANTE   GABRIEL    ROSSETTI        95 

important  of  all,  our  example  would,  we  think, 
be  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti's  prose  paraphrase  of 
his  brother's  sonnets.  The  obstacles  against 
the  adequate  turning  of  poetry  into  prose  can 
be  best  understood  by  considering  the  obstacles 
against  the  adequate  turning  of  prose  into 
poetry.  Prose  notes  tracing  out  the  course  of 
the  future  poem  may,  no  doubt,  be  made,  and 
usefully  made,  by  the  poet  (as  Wordsworth  said 
in  an  admirable  letter  to  Gillies),  unless,  indeed, 
the  notes  form  too  elaborate  an  attempt  at  a 
full  prose  expression  of  the  subject-matter,  in 
which  case,  so  soon  as  the  poet  tries  to  rise 
on  his  winged  words,  his  wingless  words  are 
likely  to  act  as  a  dead  weight.  For  this  reason, 
when  Wordsworth  said  that  the  prose  notes 
should  be  brief,  he  might  almost  as  well  have 
gone  on  to  say  that  in  expression  they  should 
be  slovenly.  This  at  least  may  be  said,  that 
the  moment  the  language  of  the  prose  note  is 
so  "  adequate  "  and  rich  that  it  seems  to  be 
what  Wordsworth  would  call  the  natural  "  in- 
carnation of  the  thought,"  the  poet's  imagina- 
tion, if  it  escapes  at  all  from  the  chains  of  the 
prose  expression,  escapes  with  great  difficulty. 
An  instance  of  this  occurred  in  Rossetti's  own 
experience. 

During  one  of  those  seaside  rambles  alluded 
to  above,  while  he  was  watching  with  some 
friends  the  billows  tumbling  in  beneath  the 
wintry  moon,  some  one,  perhaps  Rossetti 


96  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

himself,  directed  attention  to  the  peculiar 
effect  of  the  moon's  disc  reflected  in  the  white 
surf,  and  compared  it  to  fire  in  snow.  Rossetti, 
struck  with  the  picturesqueness  of  the  com- 
parison, made  there  and  then  an  elaborate  prose 
note  of  it  in  one  of  the  diminutive  po  cket-books 
that  he  was  in  the  habit  of  carrying  in  the 
capacious  pocket  of  his  waistcoat.  Years  after- 
wards— shortly  before  his  death,  in  fact — when 
he  came  to  write  '  The  King's  Tragedy,'  remem- 
bering this  note,  he  thought  he  could  find  an 
excellent  place  for  it  in  the  scene  where  the 
king  meets  the  Spae  wife  on  the  seashore  and 
listens  to  her  prophecies  of  doom.  But  he 
was  at  once  confronted  by  this  obstacle  :  so 
elaborately  had  the  image  of  the  moon  reflected 
in  the  surf  been  rendered  in  the  prose  note — so 
entirely  did  the  prose  matter  seem  to  be  the 
inevitable  and  the  final  incarnation  of  the 
thought — that  it  appeared  impossible  to  escape 
from  it  into  the  movement  and  the  diction 
proper  to  poetry.  It  was  only  after  much 
labour — a  labour  greater  than  he  had  given  to 
all  the  previous  stanzas  combined — that  he 
succeeded  in  freeing  himself  from  the  fetters  of 
the  prose,  and  in  painting  the  picture  in  these 
words : — 

That  eve  was  clenched  for  a  boding  storm 

'Neath  a  toilsome  moon  half  seen  ; 
The  cloud  stooped  low  and  the  surf  rose  high ; 
And  where  there  was  a  line  of  sky, 

Wild  wings  loomed  dark  between. 


DANTE   GABRIEL    ROSSETTI        97 

'Twas  then  the  moon  sailed  clear  of  the  rack 

On  high  on  her  hollow  dome ; 
And  still  as  aloft  with  hoary  crest 

Each  clamorous  wave  rang  home, 
Like  fire  in  snow  the  moonlight  blazed 
Amid  the  champing  foam. 

And  the  remark  was  then  made  to  him  with 
regard  to  Coleridge's  '  Wanderings  of  Cain/ 
that  it  is  not  unlikely  the  matchless  fragment 
given  in  Coleridge's  poems  might  have  passed 
nearer  towards  completion,  or  at  least  towards 
the  completion  of  the  first  part,  had  it  not  been 
for  those  elaborate  and  beautiful  prose  notes 
which  he  has  left  behind. 

And  if  the  attempt  to  turn  prose  into  poetry 
is  hopeless,  the  attempt  to  turn  poetry  into 
prose  is  no  less  so,  and  for  a  like  reason — that 
of  the  immense  difficulty  of  passing  from  the 
movement  natural  to  one  mood  into  the  move- 
ment natural  to  another.  And  this  criticism 
applies  especially  to  the  poetry  of  Rossetti, 
which  produces  so  many  of  its  best  effects  by 
means  not  of  logical  statement,  but  of  the 
music  and  suggestive  richness  of  rhythmical 
language.  That  Rossetti  did  on  some  occasions, 
when  told  that  his  sonnets  were  unintelligible, 
talk  about  making  such  a  paraphrase  himself  is 
indisputable,  because  Mr.  Fairfax  Murray  say 
that  he  heard  him  say  so.  But  indisputable 
also  is  many  another  saying  of  Rossetti's, 
equally  ill-considered  and  equally  impracticable. 
That  he  ever  seriously  thought  of  doing  so  is 
most  unlikely. 

H 


III. 

IN  his  memoir  of  his  brother,  Mr.  William 
Michael  Rossetti  thus  makes  mention  of  a 
ballad  left  by  the  poet  which  still  remains 
unpublished  : — 

"  It  [the  ballad]  is  most  fully  worthy  of 
publication,  but  has  not  been  included  in 
Rossetti's  '  Collected  Works/  because  he  gave 
the  MS.  to  his  devoted  friend  Mr.  Theodore 
Watts,  with  whom  alone  now  rests  the  decision 
of  presenting  it  or  not  to  the  public." 
And  he  afterwards  mentions  certain  sonnets  on 
the  Sphinx,  also  in  my  possession. 

With  the  most  generous  intentions  my  dear 
and  loyal  friend  William  Rossetti  has  here 
brought  me  into  trouble. 

Naturally  such  an  announcement  as  the 
above  has  excited  great  curiosity  among  ad- 
mirers of  Rossetti,  and  I  am  frequently  receiv- 
ing letters — some  of  them  cordial  enough,  but 
others  far  from  cordial — asking,  or  rather  de- 
manding, to  know  the  reason  why  important 
poems  of  Rossetti's  have  for  so  long  a  period 
been  withheld  from  the  public.  In  order  to 
explain  the  delay  I  must  first  give  two  extracts 
from  Mr.  Hall  Caine's  picturesque  '  Recollec- 
tions of  Rossetti/  published  in  1882  : — 

"  The  end  was  drawing  near,  and  we  all  knew 
98 


DANTE   GABRIEL    ROSSETTI        99 

the  fact.  Rossetti  had  actually  taken  to  poetical 
composition  afresh,  and  had  written  a  facetious 
ballad  (conceived  years  before),  of  the  length 
of  '  The  White  Ship,'  called  '  Jan  Van  Hunks,' 
embodying  an  eccentric  story  of  a  Dutchman's 
wager  to  smoke  against  the  devil.  This  was 
to  appear  in  a  miscellany  of  stories  and  poems 
by  himself  and  Mr.  Theodore  Watts,  a  project 
which  had  been  a  favourite  one  of  his  for  some 
years,  and  in  which  he  now,  in  his  last  moments, 
took  a  revived  interest,  strange  and  strong." 

"  On  Wednesday  morning,  April  5th,  I  went 
into  the  bedroom  to  which  he  had  for  some 
days  been  confined,  and  wrote  out  to  his  dicta- 
tion two  sonnets  which  he  had  composed  on  a 
design  of  his  called  '  The  Sphinx/  and  which 
he  wished  to  give,  together  with  the  drawing  and 
the  ballad  before  described,  to  Mr.  Watts  for 
publication  in  the  volume  just  mentioned.  On 
the  Thursday  morning  I  found  his  utterance 
thick,  and  his  speech  from  that  cause  hardly 
intelligible." 

As  the  facts  in  connexion  with  this  project 
exhibit,  with  a  force  that  not  all  the  words  of 
all  his  detractors  can  withstand,  the  splendid 
generosity  of  the  poet's  nature,  I  only  wish 
that  I  had  made  them  public  years  ago,  Rossetti 
(whose  power  of  taking  interest  in  a  friend's 
work  Mr.  Joseph  Knight  has  commented  upon) 
had  for  years  been  urging  me  to  publish  certain 
writings  of  mine  with  which  he  was  familiar, 
and  for  years  I  had  declined  to  do  so — declined 
for  two  simple  reasons  :  first,  though  I  liked 


ioo  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

writing  for  its  own  sake — indulged  in  it,  indeed, 
as  a  delightful  luxury — to  enter  formally  the 
literary  arena,  and  to  go  through  that  struggle 
which,  as  he  himself  used  to  say,  "  had  never 
yet  brought  comfort  to  any  poet,  but  only 
sorrow,"  had  never  been  an  ambition  of  mine  ; 
and,  secondly,  I  was  only  too  conscious  how 
biased  must  the  judgment  be  of  a  man  whose 
affections  were  so  strong  as  his  when  brought 
to  bear  upon  the  work  of  a  friend. 

In  order  at  last  to  achieve  an  end  upon  which 
he  had  set  his  heart,  he  proposed  that  he  and 
I  should  jointly  produce  the  volume  to  which 
Mr.  Hall  Caine  refers,  and  that  he  should  enrich 
it  with  reproductions  of  certain  drawings  of 
his,  including  the  '  Sphinx '  (now  or  lately  in 
the  possession  of  Mr.  William  Rossetti)  and 
crayons  and  pencil  drawings  in  my  own  posses- 
sion illustrating  poems  of  mine — those  drawings, 
I  mean,  from  that  new  model  chosen  by  me 
whose  head  Leighton  said  must  be  the  loveliest 
ever  drawn,  who  sat  for  '  The  Spirit  of  the 
Rainbow,'  and  that  other  design  which  William 
Sharp  christened  '  Forced  Music.' 

In  order  to  conquer  my  most  natural  re- 
luctance to  see  a  name  so  unknown  as  mine 
upon  a  title-page  side  by  side  with  a  name  so 
illustrious  as  his,  he  (or  else  it  was  his  generous 
sister  Christina,  I  forget  which)  italianized  the 
words  Walter  Theodore  Watts  into  "  Gualtiero 
Teodoro  Gualtieri " — a  name,  I  may  add  in 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI      101 

passing,  which  appears  as  an  inscription  on  one 
at  least  of  the  valuable  Christmas  presents  he 
made  me,  a  rare  old  Venetian  Boccaccio.  My 
portion  of  the  book  was  already  in  existence, 
but  that  which  was  to  have  been  the  main 
feature  of  the  volume,  a  ballad  of  Rossetti's 
to  be  called  *  Michael  Scott's  Wooing '  (which 
had  no  relation  to  early  designs  of  his  bearing 
that  name),  hung  fire  for  this  reason  :  the  story 
upon  which  the  ballad  was  to  have  been  based 
was  discovered  to  be  not  an  old  legend  adapted 
and  varied  by  the  Romanies,  as  I  had  supposed 
when  I  gave  it  to  him,  but  simply  the  Ettrick 
Shepherd's  novelette  '  Mary  Burnet '  ;  and  the 
project  then  rested  in  abeyance  until  that  last 
illness  at  Birchington  painted  so  graphically 
and  pathetically  by  Mr.  Hall  Caine. 

For  some  reason  quite  inscrutable  to  the  late 
John  Marshall,  who  attended  him,  and  to  all 
of  us,  this  old  idea  seized  upon  his  brain  ;  so 
much  so,  indeed,  that  Marshall  hailed  it  as  a 
good  omen,  and  advised  us  to  foster  it,  which 
we  did  with  excellent  results,  as  will  be  seen 
by  referring  to  the  very  last  entry  in  his  mother's 
touching  diary  as  lately  printed  by  Mr.  W.  M. 
Rossetti :  "  March  28,  Tuesday.  Mr.  Watts 
came  down.  Gabriel  rallied  marvellously." 

Though  the  ballad,  in  Rossetti's  own  writing, 
has  ever  since  remained  in  my  possession,  as 
have  also  the  two  sonnets  in  the  MS.  of  another 
friend  who  has  since,  I  am  delighted  to  know, 


102  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

achieved  fame  for  himself,  no  one  who  enjoyed 
the  intimate  friendship  of  Rossetti  need  be  told 
that  his  death  took  from  me  all  heart  to  publish. 
Time,  however,  is  the  suzerain  before  whom 
every  king,  even  Sorrow  himself,  bows  at  last. 
The  rights  of  Rossetti's  admirers  can  no  longer 
be  set  at  nought,  and  I  am  making  arrange- 
ments to  publish  within  the  present  year  '  Jan 
Van  Hunks '  and  the  '  Sphinx  Sonnets/  the 
former  of  which  will  show  a  new  and,  I  think, 
unexpected  side  of  Rossetti's  genius. 


IV. 

IT  is  a  sweet  and  comforting  thought  for 
every  poet  that,  whether  or  not  the  public 
cares  during  his  life  to  read  his  verses,  it 
will  after  his  death  care  very  much  to  read  his 
letters  to  his  mistress,  to  his  wife,  to  his 
relatives,  to  his  friends,  to  his  butcher,  and  to 
his  baker.  And  some  letters  are  by  that  same 
public  held  to  be  more  precious  than  others.  If, 
for  instance,  it  has  chanced  that  during  the 
poet's  life  he,  like  Rossetti,  had  to  borrow 
thirty  shillings  from  a  friend,  that  is  a  circum- 
stance of  especial  piquancy.  The  public  likes — 
or  rather  it  demands — to  know  all  about  that 
borrowed  cash.  Hence  it  behoves  the  properly 
equipped  editor  who  understands  his  duty  to 
see  that  not  one  allusion  to  it  in  the  poet's 
correspondence  is  omitted.  If  he  can  also 
show  what  caused  the  poet  to  borrow  those 
thirty  shillings — if  he  can  by  learned  annotations 
show  whether  the  friend  in  question  lent  the 
sum  willingly  or  unwillingly,  conveniently  or 
inconveniently — if  he  can  show  whether  the 
loan  was  ever  repaid,  and  if  repaid  when — he 
will  be  a  happy  editor  indeed.  Then  he  will 
find  a  large  and  a  grateful  public  to  whom  the 
mood  in  which  the  poet  sat  down  to  write 

103 


104  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

'  The  Blessed  Damosel '  is  of  far  less  interest 
than  the  mood  in  which  he  borrowed  thirty 
shillings. 

We  do  not  charge  the  editor  of  this  volume* 
with  exhibiting  unusual  want  of  taste.  On 
the  whole,  he  is  less  irritating  to  the  poetical 
student  than  those  who  have  laboured  in  kindred 
"  fields  of  literature."  Indeed,  we  do  not  so 
much  blame  the  editors  of  such  books  as  we 
blame  the  public,  whose  coarse  and  vulgar 
mouth  is  always  agape  for  such  pabulum.  The 
writer  of  this  review  possesses  an  old  circulating- 
library  copy  of  a  book  containing  some  letters 
of  Coleridge.  One  page,  and  one  only,  is 
greatly  disfigured  by  thumb  marks.  It  is  the 
page  on  which  appears,  not  some  precious  hint 
as  to  the  conclusion  of  '  Christabel,'  but  a 
domestic  missive  of  Coleridge's  ordering  broad 
beans  for  dinner. 

If,  then,  the  name  of  those  readers  who  take 
an  interest  in  broad  beans  is  legion  compared 
with  the  name  of  those  who  take  an  interest 
in  '  Kubla  Khan,'  is  not  the  wise  editor  he 
who  gives  all  due  attention  to  the  poet's 
favourite  vegetable  ?  Those  who  will  read  with 
avidity  Rossetti's  allusion  to  his  wife's  confine- 
ment in  the  letter  in  which  he  tells  Allingham 
that  "  the  child  had  been  dead  for  two  or 

*  'Letters  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  to  William 
Ailing-ham,  1854—1870.'  By  George  Birkbeck  Hill. 
(FishiT  Unwin.) 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI       105 

three  weeks  "  will  laugh  to  scorn  the  above 
remarks,  and  as  they  are  in  the  majority 
the  laugh  is  with  them. 

The  editor  of  this  volume  laments  that 
Allingham's  letters  to  Rossetti  are  beyond  all 
editorial  reach.  But  who  has  any  right  to  ask 
for  Allingham's  private  letters  ?  Rossetti,  who 
was  strongly  against  the  printing  of  private 
letters,  had  the  wholesome  practice  of  burning 
all  his  correspondence.  This  he  did  at  periodical 
holocausts — memorable  occasions  when  the 
coruscations  of  the  poet's  wit  made  the  sparks 
from  the  burning  paper  seem  pale  and  dull.  He 
died  away  from  home,  or  not  a  scrap  of  corre- 
spondence would  have  been  left  for  the  pub- 
lishers. Although  the  "  public  "  acknowledges 
no  duties  towards  the  man  of  literary  or  artistic 
genius,  but  would  shrug  up  its  shoulders  or 
look  with  dismay  at  being  asked  to  give  five 
pounds  in  order  to  keep  a  poet  from  the  work- 
house, the  moment  a  man  of  genius  becomes 
famous  the  public  becomes  aware  of  certain 
rights  in  relation  to  him.  Strangely  enough, 
these  rights  are  recognized  more  fully  in  the 
literary  arena  than  anywhere  else,  and  among 
them  the  chief  appears  to  be  that  of  reading 
an  author's  private  letters.  One  advantage — 
and  surely  it  is  a  very  great  one — that  the 
"  writing  man  "  has  over  the  man  of  action  is 
this  :  that,  while  the  portrait  of  the  man  of 
action  has  to  be  painted,  if  painted  at  all,  by 


io6  OLD   FAMILIARfFACES 

the  biographer,  the  writing  man  paints  his  own 
portrait  for  himself. 

And  as,  in  a  deep  sense,  every  biographer  is 
an  inventor  like  the  novelist — as  from  the  few 
facts  that  he  is  able  to  collect  he  infers  a  cha- 
racter— the  man  of  action,  after  he  is  dead,  is 
at  the  mercy  of  every  man  who  writes  his  life. 
Is  not  Alexander  the  Great  no  less  a  figment  of 
another  man's  brain  than  Achilles,  or  Macbeth, 
or  Mr.  Pickwick  ?  But  a  poet,  howsoever 
artistic,  howsoever  dramatic,  the  form  of  his 
work  may  be,  is  occupied  during  his  entire  life 
in  painting  his  own  portrait.  And  if  it  were 
not  for  the  intervention  of  the  biographer,  the 
reminiscence  writer,  or  the  collector  of  letters 
for  publication,  our  conception  of  every  poet 
would  be  true  and  vital  according  to  the  intel- 
ligence with  which  we  read  his  work. 

This  is  why,  of  all  English  poets,  Shakespeare 
is  the  only  one  whom  we  do  thoroughly  know — 
unless  perhaps  we  should  except  his  two  great 
contemporaries  Webster  and  Marlowe.  Steevens 
did  not  exaggerate  when  he  said  that  all  we 
know  of  Shakespeare's  outer  life  is  that  he  was 
born  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  married,  went  to 
London,  wrote  plays,  returned  to  Stratford, 
and  died.  Owing  to  this  circumstance  (and  a 
blessed  one  it  is)  we  can  commune  with  the 
greatest  of  our  poets  undisturbed.  We  know 
how  Shakespeare  confronted  every  circumstance 
of  this  mysterious  life — we  know  how  he  con- 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI      107 

fronted  the  universe,  seen  and  unseen — we  know 
to  what  degree  and  in  what  way  he  felt  every 
human  passion.  There  is  no  careless  letter  of 
his,  thank  God  !  to  give  us  a  wrong  impression 
of  him.  There  is  no  record  of  his  talk  at  the 
Mermaid,  the  Falcon,  or  the  Apollo  saloon  to 
make  readers  doubtful  whether  his  printed 
utterances  truly  represent  him.  Would  that 
the  will  had  been  destroyed  !  then  there  would 
have  been  no  talk  about  the  "  second-best 
bed  "  and  the  like  insane  gabble.  Suppose,  by 
ill  chance,  a  batch  of  his  letters  to  Anns 
Hathaway  had  been  preserved.  Is  it  not  a 
moral  certainty  that  they  would  have  been 
as  uninteresting  as  the  letters  of  Coleridge, 
of  Scott,  of  Dickens,  of  Rossetti,  and  of 
Rossetti's  sister  ? 

Why  are  the  letters  of  literary  men  apt  to  be 
so  much  less  interesting  than  those  of  other 
people  ?  Is  it  not  because,  the  desire  to  express 
oneself  in  written  language  being  universal, 
this  desire  with  people  outside  the  literary 
class  has  to  be  of  necessity  exercised  in  letter- 
writing  ?  Is  it  not  because,  where  there  is  no 
other  means  of  written  expression  than  that  of 
letter-writing,  the  best  efforts  of  the  letter- 
writer  are  put  into  the  composition,  as  the  best 
writing  of  the  essayist  is  put  into  his  essays  ? 
However  this  might  have  been  in  Shakespeare's 
time,  the  half-conscious,  graphic  power  of  the 
non-literary  letter-writer  of  to-day  is  often  so 


io8  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

great  that  if  all  the  letters  written  in  English 
by  non-literary  people,  especially  letters  written 
from  abroad  to  friends  at  home  in  the  year 
1897,*  were  collected,  and  the  cream  of  them 
extracted  and  printed,  the  book  would  be  the 
most  precious  literary  production  that  the  year 
has  to  show.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  letters 
of  contemporary  English  authors  were  collected 
in  the  same  way,  the  poverty  of  the  book  would 
be  amazing  as  compared  with  the  published 
writings  of  the  authors.  With  regard  to 
Dickens's  letters,  indeed,  the  contrast  between 
their  commonplace,  colourless  style  and  the 
pregnancy  of  his  printed  utterances  makes  the 
writing  in  his  books  seem  forced,  artificial, 
unnatural. 

The  same  may  in  some  degree  be  said  of 
such  letters  of  Rossetti  as  have  hitherto  been 
published.  The  charming  family  letters  printed 
by  his  brother  come,  of  course,  under  a  different 
category.  With  the  exception  of  these,  perhaps 
the  letters  in  the  volume  before  us  are  the 
most  interesting  Rossetti  letters  that  have  been 
printed.  Yet  it  is  astonishing  how  feeble  they 
are  in  giving  the  reader  an  idea  of  Rossetti  him- 
self. And  this  gives  birth  to  the  question  :  Do 
we  not  live  at  a  time  when  the  unfairness  of 
printing  an  author's  letters  is  greater  than  it 
ever  was  before  ?  To  go  no  further  back  than 
the  early  years  of  the  present  century,  the 
*  The  year  of  Queen  Victoria's  Diamond  Jubilee. 


DANTE   GABRIEL    ROSSETTI      109 

facilities  of  locomotion  were  then  few,  friends 
were  necessarily  separated  from  each  other  by 
long  intervals  of  time,  and  letters  were  a  very 
important  part  of  intercommunication,  con- 
sequently it  might  be  expected  that  even  among 
authors  a  good  deal  of  a  man's  individuality 
would  be  expressed  in  his  letters.  But  even  at 
that  period  it  was  only  a  quite  exceptional 
nature  like  that  of  Charles  Lamb  which  ade- 
quately expressed  itself  in  epistolary  form. 
Keats's  letters,  no  doubt,  are  full  of  good  sense 
and  good  criticism,  but  taking  them  as  a  body, 
including  the  letters  to  Fanny  Brawne,  we 
think  it  were  better  if  they  had  been  totally 
destroyed.  As  to  Byron's  letters,  they,  of 
course,  are  admirable  in  style  and  full  of  lite- 
rary life,  but  their  very  excellence  shows  that 
his  natural  mode  of  expression  was  brilliant, 
slashing  prose.  But  if  it  was  unfair  to  publish 
the  letters  of  Coleridge  and  Keats,  what  shall 
we  say  of  the  publication  of  letters  written  by 
the  authors  of  our  own  day,  when,  owing  to  an 
entire  change  in  the  conditions  of  life,  no  one 
dreams  of  putting  into  his  letters  anything  of 
literary  interest  ? 

When  Rossetti  died  he  was,  as  regards  the 
public,  owing  to  his  exclusiveness,  much  in  the 
same  position  as  Shakespeare  has  always  been. 
The  picture  of  Rossetti  that  lived  in  the  public 
mind  was  that  of  a  poet  and  painter  of  extra- 
ordinary imaginative  intensity  and  magic,  whose 


no  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

personality,  as  romantic  as  his  work,  influenced 
all  who  came  in  contact  with  him.  He  was, 
indeed,  the  only  romantic  figure  in  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  literary  and  art  world  of  his  time. 
It  seemed  as  if  in  his  very  name  there  was  an 
unaccountable  music.  The  present  writer  well 
remembers  being  at  a  dinner-party  many  years 
ago  when  the  late  Lord  Leighton  was  talking 
in  his  usual  delightful  way.  His  conversation 
was  specially  attended  to  only  by  his  inter- 
locutor, until  the  name  of  Rossetti  fell  from  his 
lips.  Then  the  general  murmur  of  tongues 
ceased.  Everybody  wanted  to  hear  what 
was  being  said  about  the  mysterious  poet- 
painter.  Thus  matters  stood  when  Rossetti 
died.  Within  forty-eight  hours  of  his  death  the 
many-headed  beast  clamoured  for  its  rights, 
Within  forty-eight  hours  of  his  death  there 
was  a  leading  article  in  an  important  news- 
paper on  the  subject  of  his  suspiciousness  as 
the  result  of  chloral-drinking.  And  from  that 
moment  the  romance  has  been  rubbed  off  the 
picture  as  effectually  by  many  of  those  who 
have  written  about  him  as  the  bloom  is 
fingered  off  of  a  clumsily  gathered  peach. 

But  the  reader  will  say,  "  Truth  is  great,  and 
must  prevail.  The  picture  of  Rossetti  that  now 
exists  in  the  public  mind  is  the  true  one.  The 
former  picture  was  a  lie."  But  here  the  reader 
will  be  much  mistaken.  The  romantic  picture 
which  existed  in  the  public  mind  during  Ros- 


DANTE   GABRIEL    ROSSETTI      in 

setti's  life  was  the  true  one ;  the  picture  that 
now  exists  of  him  is  false. 

Does  any  one  want  to  know  what  kind  of  a 
man  was  the  painter  of  '  Dante's  Dream  '  and 
the  poet  of  '  The  Blessed  Damosel,'  let  him 
wipe  out  of  his  mind  most  of  what  has  been 
written  about  him,  let  him  forget  if  he  can  most 
of  the  Rossetti  letters  that  have  been  published, 
and  let  him  read  the  poet's  poems  and  study 
the  painter's  pictures,  and  he  will  know  Rossetti 
— not,  indeed,  so  thoroughly  as  we  know  Shake- 
speare and  ^Eschylus  and  Sophocles,  but  as 
intimately  as  it  is  possible  to  know  any  man 
whose  biography  is  written  only  in  his  works. 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  for  those 
who  had  a  personal  knowledge  of  Rossetti  some 
of  the  letters  in  this  volume  will  have  an  interest, 
owing  to  the  evidence  they  afford  of  that 
authorial  generosity  which  was  one  of  his  most 
beautiful  characteristics.  His  disinterested 
appreciation  of  the  work  of  his  contemporaries 
sets  him  apart  from  all  the  other  poets  of  his 
time  and  perhaps  of  any  other  time.  To  wax 
eloquent  in  praise  of  this  and  that  illustrious 
name,  and  thus  to  claim  a  kind  of  kinship  with 
it,  is  a  very  different  thing  from  Rossetti's  noble 
championship  of  a  name,  whether  that  of  a 
friend  or  otherwise,  which  has  never  emerged 
from  obscurity.  It  is  perhaps  inevitable  and 
in  the  nature  of  things  that  most  poets  are  too 
much  absorbed  in  their  own  work  to  have  time 


H2  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

to  interest  themselves  in  the  doings  of  their 
fellow-workers. 

But,  with  regard  to  Rossetti,  he  could  feel, 
and  often  did  feel,  as  deep  an  interest  in  the 
work  of  another  man  as  in  his  own.  There  was 
no  trouble  he  would  not  take  to  aid  a  friend  in 
gaining  recognition.  This  it  was  more  than 
anything  else  which  endeared  him  to  all  his 
friends,  and  made  them  condone  those  faults 
of  his  which  ever  since  his  death  have  been  so 
freely  discussed.  The  editor  of  this  volume 
quotes  this  sentence  from  Skelton's  '  Table-Talk 
of  Shirley  '  : — 

"  I  have  preserved  a  number  of  Rossetti's 
letters,  and  there  is  barely  one,  I  think,  which 
is  not  mainly  devoted  to  warm  commendation 
of  obscure  poets  and  painters — obscure  at  the 
time  of  writing,  but  of  whom  more  than  one 
has  since  become  famous." 

Nor  was  his  interest  in  other  men's  work 
confined  to  that  of  his  personal  friends.  His 
discovery  of  Browning's  '  Pauline/  of  Charles 
Wells,  and  of  the  poems  of  Ebenezer  Jones  may 
be  cited  as  instances  of  this.  Moreover,  he  was 
always  looking  out  in  magazines — some  of  them 
of  the  most  obscure  kind — for  good  work.  And 
if  he  was  rewarded,  as  he  sometimes  was,  by 
coming  upon  precious  things  that  might  other- 
wise have  been  lost,  his  heart  was  rejoiced. 

One  day,  having  turned  into  a  coffee-house 
hi  Chancery  Lane  to  get  a  cup  of  coffee,  he 


DANTE    GABRIEL    ROSSETTI      113 

came  upon  a  number  of  Reynolds's  Miscellany, 
and  finding  there  a  poem  called  '  A  Lover's 
Pastime/  he  saw  at  once  its  extraordinary 
beauty,  and  enclosed  it  in  a  letter  to  Allingham. 
In  this  case,  however,  he  unfortunately  did  not 
make  his  usual  efforts  to  discover  the  author- 
ship of  a  poem  that  pleased  him  ;  and  a  pity 
it  is,  for  the  poem  is  one  of  the  loveliest  lyrics 
that  have  been  written  in  modern  times.  We 
hope  it  will  find  a  place  in  the  next  anthology 
of  lyrical  poetry. 

Though  his  criticisms  were  not  always  sure 
and  impeccable,  he  was  of  all  critics  the  most 
independent  of  authority.  Had  he  chanced  to 
find  in  the  poets'  corner  of  The  Eatanswill  Gazette 
a  lyric  equal  to  the  best  of  Shelley's,  he  would 
have  recognized  its  merits  at  once  and  pro- 
claimed them ;  and  had  he  come  across  a  lyric 
of  Shelley's  that  had  received  unmerited  ap- 
plause, he  would  have  recognized  its  demerits 
for  himself,  and  proclaimed  them  with  equal 
candour  and  fearlessness. 

Again,  certain  passages  in  these  letters  will 
surprise  the  reader  by  throwing  light  upon  a 
side  of  Rossetti's  life  and  character  which  was 
only  known  to  his  intimate  friends.  Recluse  as 
Rossetti  came  to  be,  he  knew  more  of  "  London 
life  "  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word  than  did 
many  of  those  who  were  supposed  to  know  it 
well — diners-out  like  Browning,  for  instance, 

I 


ii4  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

and  Richard  Doyle.  That  the  author  of  '  The 
House  of  Life  '  knew  London  on  the  side  that 
Dickens  knew  it  better  than  any  other  poet  of 
his  time  will  no  doubt  surprise  many  a  reader. 
His  visits  to  Jamrach's  mart  for  wild  animals 
led  him  to  explore  the  wonderful  world,  that 
so  few  people  ever  dream  of,  which  lies  around 
Ratcliffe  Highway.  He  observed  with  the 
greatest  zest  the  movements  of  the  East-End 
swarm.  Moreover,  his  passion  for  picking  up 
"  curios "  and  antique  furniture  made  him 
familiar  with  quarters  of  London  that  he  would 
otherwise  have  never  known.  And  not  Dickens 
himself  had  more  of  what  may  be  called  the 
"  Haroun  al  Raschid  passion  "  for  wandering 
through  a  city's  streets  at  night.  It  was  this 
that  kept  him  in  touch  on  one  side  with  men 
so  unlike  him  as  Brough  and  Sala. 

In  this  volume  there  is  a  charming  anecdote 
of  his  generosity  to  Brough's  family,  and  Sala 
always  spoke  of  him  as  "  dear  Dante  Rossetti." 
The  transpontine  theatre,  even  the  penny  gaff 
of  the  New  Cut,  was  not  quite  unfamiliar  with 
the  face  of  the  poet-painter.  Hence  no  man 
was  a  better  judge  than  he  of  the  low-life 
pictures  of  a  writer  like  F.  W.  Robinson,  whose 
descriptions  of  the  street  arab  in  '  Owen,  a 
Waif,'  &c.,  he  would  read  aloud  with  a  dramatic 
power  astonishing  to  those  who  associated  him 
exclusively  with  Da  ate,  Beatrice,  and  mystical 
passion. 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI      115 

Frequently  in  these  letters  an  allusion  will 
puzzle  the  reader  who  does  not  know  of  Rossetti's 
love  of  nocturnal  rambling,  an  allusion,  how- 
ever, which  those  who  knew  him  will  fully 
understand.  Here  is  a  sentence  of  the  kind  : — 

"As  I  haven't  been  outside  my  door  for 
months  in  the  daytime,  I  should  not  have  had 
much  opportunity  of  enjoying  pastime  and 
pleasaunces." 

The  editor  quotes  some  graphic  and  interesting 
words  from  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  which  explain 
this  passage. 

In  summer,  as  in  winter,  he  rose  very  late  in 
the  day  and  made  a  breakfast,  as  he  used  to 
say,  which  was  to  keep  him  in  fuel  for  some- 
thing under  twelve  hours.  He  would  then 
begin  to  paint,  and  scarcely  leave  his  work  till 
the  daylight  waned.  Then  he  would  dine,  and 
afterwards  start  off  for  a  walk  through  the 
London  streets,  which  to  him,  as  he  used  to  say, 
put  on  a  magical  robe  with  the  lighting  of  the 
gas  lamps.  After  walking  for  miles  through 
the  streets,  either  with  a  friend  or  alone,  loiter- 
ing at  the  windows  of  such  shops  as  still  were 
open,  he  would  turn  into  an  oyster  shop  or  late 
restaurant  for  supper.  Here  his  frankness  of 
bearing  was  quite  irresistible  with  strangers 
whenever  it  pleased  him  to  approach  them, 
as  he  sometimes  did.  The  most  singular  and 
bizarre  incidents  of  his  life  occurred  to  him  on 
these  occasions — incidents  which  he  would  relate 


n6  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

with  a  dramatic  power  that  set  him  at  the  head 
of  the  raconteurs  of  his  time.  One  of  these 
rencontres  in  the  Haymarket  was  of  a  quite 
extraordinary  character. 

In  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  when  he  lived 
at  Cheyne  Walk,  he  would  often  not  begin  his 
perambulations  until  an  hour  before  midnight. 
It  will  be  a  pity  if  some  one  who  accompanied 
him  in  his  nocturnal  rambles — the  most  remark- 
able man  of  our  time — does  not  furnish  the  world 
with  reminiscences  of  them. 

Another  point  of  interest  upon  which  these 
letters  will  throw  light  is  that  connected  with 
his  method  of  work.  He  himself,  like  Tenny- 
son, used  to  say  that  those  who  are  the  most 
curious  as  to  the  way  in  which  a  poem  was 
written  are  precisely  those  who  have  the  least 
appreciation  of  the  beauties  of  the  poem  itself. 
If  this  is  true,  the  time  in  which  we  live  is  not 
remarkable,  perhaps  >  for  its  appreciation  of 
poetry.  These  letters,  at  any  rate,  will  be 
appreciated,  for  the  light  that  some  of  them 
throw  upon  Rossetti  at  work  is  remarkable. 
When  a  subject  for  a  poem  struck  him,  it  was 
his  way  to  make  a  prose  note  of  it,  then  to 
cartoon  it,  then  to  leave  it  for  a  time,  then  to 
take  it  up  again  and  read  it  to  his  friends,  and 
then  to  finish  it.  In  a  letter  to  Allingham, 
dated  July  i8th,  1854,  enclosing  the  first  form 
of  the  sonnet  called  '  Lost  on  Both  Sides ' — 
which  sonnet  did  not  appear  in  print  till  1881 — 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI      117 

Rossetti  says  :  "  My  sonnets  are  not  generally 
finished  till  I  see  them  again  after  forgetting 
them  ;  and  this  is  only  two  days  old.  When 
between  the  first  form  of  a  sonnet  and  the  second 
an  interval  of  twenty-seven  years  elapses,  no 
student  of  poetry  can  fail  to  compare  one  form 
with  the  other. 

And  so  with  regard  to  that  poem  which  is, 
on  the  whole,  Rossetti  s  masterpiece — f  Sister 
Helen ' — sent  as  early  as  1854  to  Mrs.  Howitt 
for  the  German  publication  the  Dusseldorf 
Annual ;  the  changes  in  it  are  extremely  inter- 
esting. Never  did  it  appear  in  print  without 
suffering  some  important  variation.  Some- 
times, indeed,  the  change  of  a  word  or  two  in  a 
line  would  entirely  transfigure  the  stanza.  As 
to  the  new  stanzas  added  to  the  ballad  just 
before  Rossetti' s  death,  these  turned  the  ballad 
from  a  fine  poem  into  a  great  one. 

Equally  striking  are  the  changes  in  '  The 
Blessed  Damosel.'  But  the  most  notable  ex- 
ample of  the  surety  of  his  hand  in  revising  is 
seen  in  regard  to  a  poem  several  times  men- 
tioned in  this  volume,  called  originally  '  Bride's 
Chamber  Talk.'  It  was  begun  as  early  as 
'  Jenny,'  read  by  Allingham  in  1860,  but  not 
printed  till  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century 
later.  The  earliest  form  is  still  in  existence  in 
MS.,  and  although  some  of  the  lines  struck  out 
are  as  poetry  most  lovely,  the  poem  on  the 
whole  is  better  without  them.  It  was  a  theory 


n8  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

of  Rossetti's,  indeed,  that  the  very  riches  of 
the  English  language  made  it  necessary  for  the 
poet  who  would  achieve  excellence  to  revise  and 
manipulate  his  lines.  And  in  support  of  this 
he  would  contrast  the  amazing  passion  for 
revision  disclosed  by  Dr.  Garnett's  '  Relics  of 
Shelley,'  in  which  sometimes  scarcely  half  a 
dozen  of  the  original  words  are  left  on  a  page, 
with  Scott's  metrical  narratives,  which  were 
sent  to  the  printer  in  cantos  as  they  were 
written,  like  one  of  the  contemporary  novels 
thrown  off  for  the  serials.  The  fact  seems  to 
be,  however,  that  the  poet's  power  of  reaching, 
as  Scott  reached,  his  own  ideal  expression  per 
saltum,  or  reaching  it  slowly  and  tentatively,  is 
simply  a  matter  of  temperament.  For  whose 
verses  are  more  loose- jointed  than  Byron's  ? 
whose  diction  is  more  commonplace  than  his  ? 
And  yet  this  is  what  the  greatest  of  Byron 
specialists,  Mr  John  Murray,  says  in  his  ex- 
tremely interesting  remarks  upon  Byron's  auto- 
graph :— 

"If  we  except  Byron's  dramatic  pieces  and 
'  Don  Juan,'  the  first  draft  of  Byron's  longer 
poems  formed  but  a  nucleus  of  the  work  as  it 
was  printed.  For  example,  '  English  Bards 
and  Scotch  Reviewers  '  grew  out  of  the  '  British 
Bards,'  while  '  The  Giaour,'  by  constant  addi- 
tions to  the  manuscript,  the  proofs,  and  even 
to  the  work  after  publication,  was  expanded  to 
nearly  twice  its  original  size When  the 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI      119 

inspiration  was  on  him,  the  printer  had  to  be 
kept  at  work  the  greater  part  of  the  night, 
and  fresh  '  copy  '  and  fresh  revises  were  crossing 
one  another  hour  by  hour." 

The  conclusion  is  that  poets  cannot  be  classi- 
fied according  to  their  methods  of  work,  but 
only  in  relation  to  the  result  of  those  methods, 
and  that  our  two  great  elaborators,  Byron  and 
Rossetti,  may  still  be  more  unlike  each  other 
in  essentials  than  are  any  other  two  nineteenth- 
century  poets. 

On  the  whole,  we  cannot  help  closing  this 
book  with  kindly  feelings  towards  the  editor, 
inasmuch  as  it  aids  in  the  good  work  of  restoring 
the  true  portrait  of  the  man  who  has  suffered 
more  than  any  other  from  the  mischievous 
malignity  of  foes  and  the  more  mischievous 
indiscretion  of  certain  of  his  friends. 


III. 

ALFRED,    LORD    TENNYSON. 

1809-1892. 
i. 

CHARLES  LAMB  was  so  paralyzed,  it  is 
said,  by  Coleridge's  death,  that  for 
weeks  after  that  event,  he  was  heard 
murmuring  often  to  himself,  "  Coleridge  is 
dead,  Coleridge  is  dead."  In  such  a  mental 
condition  at  this  moment  is  an  entire 
country,  I  think.  '  Tennyson  is  dead  ! 
Tennyson  is  dead !  "  It  will  be  some  time 
before  England's  loss  can  really  be  expressed  by 
any  words  so  powerful  in  pathos  and  in  sorrow 
as  these.  And  if  this  is  so  with  regard  to  English 
people  generally,  what  of  those  few  who  knew 
the  man,  and  knowing  him,  must  needs  love 
him — must  needs  love  him  above  all  others  ? — 
those,  I  mean,  who,  when  speaking  of  him,  used 
to  talk  not  so  much  about  the  poetry  as  about 
the  man  who  wrote  it — those  who  now  are 
saying,  with  a  tremor  of  the  voice,  and  a  moisten- 
ing of  the  eye  : — 

There  was  none  like  him — none. 

To  say  wherein  lies  the  secret  of  the  charm  of 
anything  that  lives  is  mostly  difficult.  Especially 

120 


U.KKKP,    I.ORI)    TKNNYSON,    .KT.    So 


l-'roin  a  photograph  reproduced  by  the  kind  permission  of  Lord  Tennyson 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   121 

is  it  so  with  regard  to  a  man  of  poetic  genius. 
All  are  agreed,  for  instance,  that  D.  G.  Rossetti 
possessed  an  immense  charm.  So  he  did, 
indeed.  But  who  has  been  able  to  define 
that  charm  ?  I,  too,  knew  Rossetti  well,  and 
loved  him  well.  Sometimes,  indeed,  the  ego- 
tism of  a  sorrowing  memory  makes  me  think 
that  outside  his  own  most  affectionate  and 
noble-tempered  family,  including  that  old  friend 
in  art  at  whose  feet  he  sat  as  a  boy,  no  man 
loved  Rossetti  so  deeply  and  so  lastingly  as  I 
did ;  unless,  perhaps,  it  was  the  poor  blind 
poet,  Philip  Marston,  who,  being  so  deeply 
stricken,  needed  to  love  and  to  be  loved  more 
sorely  than  I,  to  whom  Fate  has  been  kind. 
And  yet  I  should  find  it  difficult  to  say  wherein 
lay  the  charm  of  Rossetti's  chameleon-like  per- 
sonality. So  with  other  men  and  women  I 
could  name.  This  is  not  so  in  regard  to  the 
great  man  now  lying  dead  at  Aldworth.  Nothing 
is  easier  than  to  define  the  charm  of  Tennyson. 
It  lay  in  a  great  veracity  of  soul — in  a  simple 
sin  le-mindedness  so  childlike  that,  unless  you 
had  known  him  to  be  the  undoubted  author  of 
his  exquisitely  artistic  poems,  you  would  have 
supposed  that  even  the  subtleties  of  poetic  art 
must  be  foreign  to  a  nature  so  devoid  of  all 
subtlety  as  his.  "  Homer,"  you  would  have 
said,  "  might  have  been  such  a  man  as  this,  for 
Homer  worked  in  a  language  which  is  Poetry's 
very  voice.  But  Tennyson  works  in  a  language 


122  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

which  has  to  be  moulded  into  harmony  by  a 
myriad  subtleties  of  art.  How  can  this  great 
inspired  child,  who  yet  has  the  simple  wisdom 
of  Bragi,  the  poetry-smith  of  the  Northern 
Olympus,  be  the  delicate-fingered  artist  of  '  The 
Princess/  '  The  Palace  of  Art,'  '  The  Day- 
Dream,'  and  '  The  Dream  of  Fair  Women  '  ?  " 
As  deeply  as  some  men  feel  that  language 
was  given  to  men  to  disguise  their  thoughts  did 
Tennyson  feel  that  language  was  given  to  him 
to  declare  his  thoughts  without  disguise.  He 
knew  of  but  one  justification  for  the  thing  he 
said,  viz.,  that  it  was  the  thing  he  thought. 
Arriere  pensee  was  with  him  impossible.  But, 
it  may  be  asked,  when  a  man  carries  out-speak- 
ing to  such  a  pass  as  this,  is  he  not  apt  to  become 
a  somewhat  troublesome  and  discordant  thread 
in  the  complex  web  of  modern  society  ?  No 
doubt  any  other  man  than  Tennyson  would 
have  been  so.  But  the  honest  ring  in  the  voice 
— which,  by-the-by,  was  strengthened  and 
deepened  by  the  old-fashioned  Lincolnshire 
accent — softened  and,  to  a  great  degree,  neutral- 
ized the  effect  of  the  bluntness.  Moreover, 
behind  this  uncompromising  directness  was 
apparent  a  noble  and  a  splendid  courtesy  ;  for, 
above  all  things,  Tennyson  was  a  great  and 
forthright  English  gentleman.  As  he  stood  at 
the  porch  at  Aldworth,  meeting  a  guest  or  bid- 
ding hmi  good-bye — as  he  stood  there,  tall,  far 
beyond  the  height  of  average  men,  his  naturally 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   123 

fair  skin  showing  dark  and  tanned  by  the  sun 
and  wind — as  he  stood  there  no  one  could  mis- 
take him  for  anything  but  a  great  gentleman, 
who  was  also  much  more.  Up  to  the  last  a 
man  of  extraordinary  presence,  he  showed,  I 
think,  the  beauty  of  old  age  to  a  degree  rarely 
seen. 

A  friend  of  his  who,  visiting  him  on  his  birth- 
day, discovered  him  thus  standing  at  the  door 
to  welcome  him,  has  described  his  unique 
appearance  hi  words  which  are  literally  accurate 
at  least : — 

A  poet  should  be  limned  in  youth,  they  say, 

Or  else  in  prime,  with  eyes  and  forehead  beaming 
Of  manhood's  noon — the  very  body  seeming 

To  lend  the  spirit  wings  to  win  the  bay ; 

But  here  stands  he  whose  noontide  blooms  for  aye, 
Whose  eyes,  where  past  and  future  both  are  gleaming 
With  lore  beyond  all  youthful  poets'  dreaming, 

Seem  lit  from  shores  of  some  far-glittering  day. 

Our  master's  prime  is  now — is  ever  now ; 

Our  star  that  wastes  not  in  the  wastes  of  night 
Holds  Nature's  dower  undimmed  in  Time's  despite ; 
Those  eyes  seem  Wisdom's  own  beneath  that  brow, 
Where  every  furrow  Time  hath  dared  to  plough 
Shines  a  new  bar  of  still  diviner  light. 

This,  then,  was  the  secret  of  Tennyson's 
personal  charm.  And  if  the  reader  is  sceptical 
as  to  its  magnetic  effect  upon  his  friends,  let  me 
remind  him  of  the  amazing  rarity  of  these 
great  and  guileless  natures ;  let  me  remind 
him  also  that  this  world  is  comprised  of 
two  classes  of  people — the  bores,  whose  name  is 
legion,  and  the  interesting  people,  whose  name  is 


124  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

not  legion — the  former  being  those  whose  natural 
instinct  of  self-protective  mimicry  impels  them 
to  move  about  among  their  fellows  hiding  their 
features  behind  a  mask  of  convention,  the  latter 
being  those  who  move  about  with  uncovered 
faces  just  as  Nature  fashioned  them.  If  guile- 
lessness  lends  interest  to  a  dullard,  it  is  still 
more  so  with  the  really  luminous  souls.  So 
infinite  is  the  creative  power  of  nature  that  she 
makes  no  two  individuals  alike.  If  we  only  had 
the  power  of  inquiring  into  the  matter,  we  should 
find  not  only  that  each  individual  creature  that 
once  inhabited  one  of  the  minute  shells  that  go 
to  the  building  of  England's  fortress  walls  of 
chalk  was  absolutely  unlike  all  the  others,  but 
that  even  the  poor  microbe  himself,  who  in 
these  days  is  so  maligned,  is  also  very  intensely 
an  individual. 

Some  time  ago  the  old  discussion  was  revived 
in  The  Aihenczum  as  to  whether  the  nightingale's 
song  was  joyful  or  melancholy.  And,  perhaps, 
if  the  poems  of  the  late  James  Thomson  and  the 
poems  of  Mr.  Austin  Dobson  were  recited  by 
their  authors  to  a  congregation  of  nightingales, 
the  question  would  at  once  be  debated  amongst 
them,  "  Is  the  note  of  the  human  songster 
joyful  or  melancholy  ?  "  The  truth  is  that  the 
humidity  or  the  dryness  of  the  atmosphere  in 
the  various  habitats  of  the  nightingale  modifies 
so  greatly  the  timbre  of  the  voice  that,  while  a 
nightingale  chorus  at  Fiesole  may  seem  joyous, 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   125 

a  nightingale  chorus  in  the  moist  thickets  along 
the  banks  of  the  Ouse  may  seem  melancholy. 
Nay,  more,  as  I  once  told  Tennyson  at  Aid- 
worth,  I,  when  a  truant  boy  wandering  along 
the  banks  of  the  Ouse  (where  six  nightingales' 
nests  have  been  found  in  the  hedge  of  a  single 
meadow),  got  so  used  to  these  matters  that  I 
had  my  own  favourite  individuals,  and  could 
easily  distinguish  one  from  another.  That  rich 
climacteric  swell  which  is  reached  just  before 
the  "  jug,  jug,  jug,"  varies  amazingly,  if  the 
listener  will  only  give  the  matter  attention. 
And  if  this  infinite  variety  of  individualism  is 
thus  seen  in  the  lower  animals,  what  must  it  be 
in  man  ? 

There  is,  however,  in  the  entire  human  race, 
a  fatal  instinct  for  marring  itself.  To  break 
down  the  exterior  signs  of  this  variety  of  indi- 
vidualism in  the  race  by  mutual  imitation,  by 
all  sorts  of  affectations,  is  the  object  not  only 
of  the  civilization  of  the  Western  world,  but  of 
the  very  negroes  on  the  Gaboon  River.  No 
wonder,  then,  that  whensoever  we  meet,  as  at 
rarest  interval  we  do  meet,  an  individual  who  is 
able  to  preserve  his  personality  as  Nature 
meant  it  to  live,  we  feel  an  attraction  towards 
him  such  as  is  irresistible.  Now  I  would 
challenge  those  who  knew  him  to  say  whether 
they  ever  knew  any  other  man  so  free  from  this 
great  human  infirmity  as  Tennyson.  The  way 
in  which  his  simplicity  of  nature  would  manifest 


126  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

itself  was,  in  some  instances,  most  remarkable. 
Though,  of  course,  he  had  his  share  of  that 
egoism  of  the  artist  without  which  imaginative 
genius  may  become  sterile,  it  seemed  impossible 
for  him  to  realize  what  a  transcendent  position 
he  took  among  contemporary  writers  all  over 
the  world.  "  Poets,"  he  once  said  to  me,  "  have 
not  had  the  advantage  of  being  born  to  the 
purple."  Up  to  the  last  he  felt  himself  to  be  a 
poet  at  struggle  more  or  less  with  the  Wilsons 
and  the  Crokers  who,  in  his  youth,  assailed  him. 
I,  and  a  very  dear  friend  of  his,  a  family  con- 
nexion, tried  in  vain  to  make  him  see  that  when 
a  poet  had  reached  a  position  such  as  he  had 
won,  no  criticism  could  injure  him  or  benefit  him 
one  jot. 

What  has  been  called  his  exclusiveness  is 
entirely  mythical.  He  was  the  most  hospitable 
of  men.  It  was  very  rare,  indeed,  for  him  to 
part  from  a  friend  at  his  hall  door,  or  at  the 
railway  station  without  urging  him  to  return  as 
soon  as  possible,  and  generally  with  the  words, 
"  Come  whenever  you  like."  The  fact  is,  how- 
ever, that  for  many  years  the  strangest  notions 
seem  to  have  got  abroad  as  to  the  claims  of  the 
public  upon  men  of  genius.  There  seems  now  to 
be  scarcely  any  one  who  does  not  look  upon 
every  man  who  has  passed  into  the  purgatory 
of  fame  as  his  or  her  common  property.  The 
unlucky  victim  is  to  be  pestered  by  letters  upon 
every  sort  of  foolish  subject,  and  to  be  hunted 


ALFRED,    LORD   TENNYSON        127 

down  in  his  walks  and  insulted  by  senseless 
adulation.  Tennyson  resented  this,  and  so  did 
Rossetti,  and  so  ought  every  man  who  has 
reached  eminence  and  respects  his  own  genius. 
Neither  fame  nor  life  itself  is  worth  having  on 
such  terms  as  these. 

One  day,  Tennyson  when  walking  round  his 
garden  at  Farringford,  saw  perched  up  in  the 
trees  that  surrounded  it,  two  men  who  had  been 
refused  admittance  at  the  gate — two  men 
dressed  like  gentlemen.  He  very  wisely  gave 
the  public  to  understand  that  his  fame  was  not 
to  be  taken  as  an  abrogation  of  his  rights  as  a 
private  English  gentleman.  For  my  part, 
whenever  I  hear  any  one  railing  against  a  man 
of  eminence  with  whom  he  cannot  possibly  have 
been  brought  into  contact,  I  know  at  once  what 
it  means  :  the  railer  has  been  writing  an  idle 
letter  to  the  eminent  one  and  received  no  reply. 

Tennyson's  knowledge  of  nature — nature  in 
every  aspect — was  very  great.  His  passion 
for  "  star-gazing  "  has  often  been  commented 
upon  by  readers  of  his  poetry.  Since  Dante  no 
poet  in  any  land  has  so  loved  the  stars.  He  had 
an  equal  delight  in  watching  the  lightning  ;  and 
I  remember  being  at  Aldworth  once  during  a 
thunderstorm,  when  I  was  alarmed  at  the 
temerity  with  which  he  persisted,  in  spite  of  all 
remonstrances,  in  gazing  at  the  blinding  light- 
ning. For  moonlight  effects  he  had  a  passion 
equally  strong,  and  it  is  especially  pathetic  to 


128  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

those  who  know  this  to  remember  that  he  passed 
away  in  the  light  he  so  loved — in  a  room  where 
there  was  no  artificial  light — nothing  to  quicken 
the  darkness  but  the  light  of  the  full  moon 
(which  somehow  seems  to  shine  more  brightly 
at  Aldworth  than  anywhere  else  in  England)  ; 
and  that  on  the  face  of  the  poet,  as  he  passed 
away,  fell  that  radiance  in  which  he  so  loved 
to  bathe  it  when  alive. 

If  it  is  as  easy  to  describe  the  personal  attrac- 
tion of  Tennyson  as  it  is  difficult  to  describe 
that  of  any  one  of  his  great  contemporaries,  we 
do  not  find  the  same  relations  existing  between 
him  and  them  as  regards  his  place  in  the  firma- 
ment of  English  poetry.  In  a  country  with  a 
composite  language  such  as  ours,  it  may  be 
affirmed  with  special  emphasis,  that  there  are 
two  kinds  of  poetry  ;  one  appealing  to  the  un- 
cultivated masses,  whose  vocabulary  is  of  the 
narrowest ;  the  other  appealing  to  the  few  who, 
partly  by  temperament,  and  partly  by  educa- 
tion, are  sensitive  to  the  true  beauties  of  poetic 
art.  While  in  the  one  case  the  appeal  is  made 
through  a  free  and  popular  use  of  words,  partly 
commonplace  and  partly  steeped  in  that  literary 
sentimentalism  which  in  certain  stages  of  an 
artificial  society  takes  the  place  of  the  simple 
utterances  of  simple  passion  of  earlier  and 
simpler  times ;  in  the  other  case  the  appeal  is 
made  very  largely  through  what  Dante  calls 
the  "  use  of  the  sieve  for  noble  words." 


ALFRED,    LORD   TENNYSON       129 

Of  the  one  perhaps  Byron  is  the  type,  the 
exemplars  being  such  poets  as  those  of  the 
Mrs.  Hemans  school  in  England,  and  of  the  Long- 
fellow school  in  America.  Of  the  other  class 
of  poets,  the  class  typified  by  Milton,  the  most 
notable  exemplars  are  Keats,  Shelley,  and 
Coleridge.  Wordsworth  partakes  of  the 
qualities  of  both  classes.  The  methods  of  the 
first  of  these  two  groups  are  so  cheap — they  are 
so  based  on  the  wide  severance  between  the 
popular  taste  and  the  poetic  temper  (which, 
though  in  earlier  times  it  inspired  the  people, 
is  now  confined  to  the  few) — that  one  may  say 
of  the  first  group  that  their  success  in  finding 
and  holding  an  audience  is  almost  damnatory 
to  them  as  poets.  As  compared  with  the  poets 
of  Greece,  however,  both  groups  may  be  said  to 
have  secured  only  a  partial  success  in  poetry ; 
for  not  only  ^Eschylus  and  Sophocles,  but 
Homer  too,  are  as  satisfying  in  the  matter  of 
noble  words  as  though  they  had  never  tried  to 
win  that  popular  success  which  was  their  goal. 
In  this  respect — as  being,  I  mean,  the  compeer 
of  the  great  poets  of  Greece — Shakespeare  takes 
his  peculiar  place  in  English  poetry.  Of  all 
poets  he  is  the  most  popular,  and  yet  in  his 
use  of  the  "  sieve  for  noble  words  "  his  skill 
transcends  that  of  even  Milton,  Coleridge, 
Shelley,  and  Keats.  His  felicities  of  diction 
in  the  great  passages  seem  little  short  of 
miraculous,  and  they  are  so  many  that  it  is 

K 


130  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

easy  to  understand  why  he  is  so  often  spoken 
of  as  being  a  kind  of  inspired  improvisatore. 
That  he  was  not  an  improvisatore,  however, 
any  one  can  see  who  will  take  the  trouble  to 
compare  the  first  edition  of  '  Romeo  and 
Juliet '  with  the  received  text,  the  first  sketch 
of  '  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor '  with  the 
play  as  we  now  have  it,  and  the  '  Hamlet '  of 
1603  with  the  '  Hamlet '  of  1604,  and  with  the 
still  further  varied  version  of  the  play  given 
by  Heminge  and  Condell  in  the  Folio  of  1623. 
If  we  take  into  account,  moreover,  that  it  is 
only  by  the  lucky  chapter  of  accidents  that  we 
now  possess  the  earlier  forms  of  the  three  plays 
mentioned  above,  and  that  most  likely  the 
other  plays  were  once  in  a  like  condition,  we 
shall  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there  was  no 
more  vigilant  worker  with  Dante's  sieve  than 
Shakespeare.  Next  to  Shakespeare  in  this 
great  power  of  combining  the  forces  of  the  two 
great  classes  of  English  poets,  appealing  both 
to  the  commonplace  sense  of  a  commonplace 
public  and  to  the  artistic  sense  of  the  few, 
stands,  perhaps,  Chaucer ;  but  since  Shake- 
speare's time  no  one  has  met  with  anything 
like  Tennyson's  success  in  effecting  a  recon- 
ciliation between  popular  and  artistic  sym- 
pathy with  poetry  in  England. 

The  biography  of  such  a  poet,  one  who 
has  had  such  an  immense  influence  upon  the 
literary  history  of  the  entire  Victorian  epoch 


ALFRED,   LORD   TENNYSON       131 

— indeed,  upon  the  nineteenth  century,  for  his 
work  covers  two-thirds  of  the  century — will  be 
a  work  of  incalculable  importance.  There  is 
but  one  man  who  is  fully  equipped  for  such  an 
undertaking,  and  fortunately  that  is  his  own 
son — a  man  of  great  ability,  of  admirable 
critical  acumen,  and  of  quite  exceptional 
accomplishments.  His  son's  filial  affection 
was  so  precious  to  Tennyson  that,  although 
the  poet's  powers  remained  undimmed  to  the 
last  day  of  his  life,  I  do  not  believe  that  we 
should  have  had  all  the  splendid  work  of  the 
last  ten  years  without  his  affectionate  and 
unwearied  aid. 


II. 

ALL  emotion — that  of  communities  as 
well  as  that  of  individuals — is  largely 
governed  by  the  laws  of  ebb  and  flow. 
It  is  immediately  after  a  national  mourning 
for  the  loss  of  a  great  man  that  a  wave  of 
reaction  generally  sets  in.  But  the  eagerness 
with  which  these  volumes*  have  been  awaited 
shows  that  Tennyson's  hold  upon  the  British 
public  is  as  strong  at  this  moment  as  it 
was  on  the  day  of  his  death.  This  very  popu- 
larity of  his,  however,  has  sometimes  been 
spoken  of  by  critics  as  though  it  were  an 
impeachment  of  him  as  a  poet.  "  The  English 
public  is  commonplace,"  they  say,  "and  hence 
the  commonplace  in  poetry  suits  it."  And  no 
doubt  this  is  true  as  a  general  saying,  otherwise 
what  would  become  of  certain  English  poetasters 
who  are  such  a  joy  to  the  many  and  such  a 
source  of  laughter  to  the  few  ?  But  a  hardy 
critic  would  he  be  who  should  characterize 
Tennyson's  poetry  as  commonplace — that  very 
poetry  which,  before  it  became  popular,  was 
decried  because  it  was  merely  "  poetry  for 
poets." 
Still  that  poetry  so  rich  and  so  rare  as  his 

'  Alfred,  Lord  Tennyson  :  a  Memoir.'    By  his  Son.    2  vols. 
(Macmillan). 

132 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   133 

should  find  its  way  to  the  heart  of  a  people  like 
the  English,  who  have  "  not  sufficient  poetic 
instinct  in  them  to  give  birth  to  vernacular 
poetry,"  is  undoubtedly  a  striking  fact.  With 
regard  to  the  mass  of  his  work,  he  belonged  to 
those  poets  whose  appeal  is  as  much  through 
their  mastery  over  the  more  subtle  beauties  of 
poetic  art  as  through  the  heat  of  the  poetic  fire  ; 
and  such  as  these  must  expect  to  share  the  fate 
of  Coleridge,  Keats,  and  Shelley.  Every  true 
poet  must  have  an  individual  accent  of  his  own — 
an  accent  which  is,  however,  recognizable  as 
another  variation  of  that  large  utterance  of  the 
early  gods  common  to  all  true  poets  in  all 
tongues.  Is  it  not,  then,  in  the  nature  of 
things  that,  in  England  at  least,  "  the  fit  though 
few "  comprise  the  audience  of  such  a  poet 
until  the  voice  of  recognized  Authority  pro- 
claims him  ?  But  Authority  moves  slowly  in 
these  matters  ;  years  have  to  pass  before  the 
music  of  the  new  voice  can  wind  its  way  through 
the  convolutions  of  the  general  ear — so  many 
years,  indeed,  that  unless  the  poet  is  blessed 
with  the  sublime  self-esteem  of  Wordsworth  he 
generally  has  to  die  in  the  belief  that  his  is 
another  name  "  written  in  water."  And  was 
it  always  so  ?  Yes,  always. 

England  having,  as  we  have  said,  no  ver- 
nacular song,  her  poetry  is  entirely  artistic, 
even  such  poetry  as  '  The  May  Queen/ 
'  The  Northern  Farmer,'  and  the  idyls  of 


134  OLD     7AMILIAR   FACES 

William  Barnes.  And  it  would  be  strange 
indeed  if,  until  Authority  spoke  out,  the 
beauties  of  artistic  poetry  were  ever  apparent 
to  the  many.  Is  it  supposable,  for  instance, 
that  even  the  voice  of  Chaucer — is  it  supposable 
that  even  the  voice  of  Shakspeare — would  have 
succeeded  in  winning  the  contemporary  ear  had 
it  not  been  for  that  great  mass  of  legendary  and 
romantic  material  which  each  of  these  found 
ready  to  his  hand,  waiting  to  be  moulded  into 
poetic  form  ?  The  fate,  however,  of  Moore's 
poetical  narratives  (perhaps  we  might  say  of 
Byron's  too)  shows  that  if  any  poetry  is  to  last 
beyond  the  generation  that  produced  it,  there 
is  needed  not  only  the  romantic  material,  but 
also  the  accent,  new  and  true,  of  the  old  poetic 
voice.  And  these  volumes  show  why  in  these 
late  days,  when  the  poet's  inheritance  of 
romantic  material  seemed  to  have  been  ex- 
hausted, there  appeared  one  poet  to  whom  the 
English  public  gave  an  acceptance  as  wide 
almost  as  if  he  had  written  in  the  vernacular  like 
Burns  or  Beranger. 

It  is  long  since  any  book  has  been  so  eagerly 
looked  forward  to  as  this.  The  mam  facts  of 
Tennyson's  life  have  been  matter  of  familiar 
knowledge  for  so  many  years  that  we  do  not 
propose  to  run  over  them  here  once  more.  Nor 
shall  we  fill  the  space  at  our  command  with  the 
biographer's  interesting  personal  anecdotes.  So 
fierce  a  light  had  been  beating  upon  Aldworth 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   135 

and  Farringford  that  the  relations  of  the  present 
Lord  Tennyson  to  his  father  were  pretty 
generally  known.  In  the  story  of  English 
poetry  these  relations  held  a  place  that  was 
quite  unique.  What  the  biographer  says  about 
the  poet's  sagacity,  judgment,  and  good  sense — 
especially  what  he  says  about  his  insight  into 
the  characters  of  those  with  whom  he  was 
brought  into  contact — will  be  challenged  by  no 
one  who  knew  him.  Still,  the  fact  remains 
that  Tennyson's  temperament  was  poetic 
entirely.  And  the  more  attention  the  poet  pays 
to  his  art,  the  more  unfitted  does  he  become  to 
pay  attention  to  anything  else.  For  in  these 
days  the  mechanism  of  social  life  moves  on 
grating  wheels  that  need  no  little  oiling  if  the 
poet  is  to  bring  out  the  very  best  that  is  within 
him.  Not  that  all  poets  are  equally  vexed  by 
the  special  infirmity  of  the  poetic  temperament. 
Poets  like  Wordsworth,  for  instance,  are  sup- 
ported against  the  world  by  love  of  Nature  and 
by  that  "  divine  arrogance  "  which  is  some- 
times a  characteristic  of  genius.  Tennyson's 
case  shows  that  not  even  love  of  Nature  and 
intimate  communings  with  her  are  of  use  in 
giving  a  man  peace  when  he  has  not  Words- 
worth's temperament.  No  adverse  criticism 
could  disturb  Wordsworth's  sublime  self-com- 
placency. 

"  Your  father,"  writes  Jowett,  with  his  usual 
wisdom,  to   Lord  Tennyson,  "  was   very  sensi- 


136  OLD   FAMILIAR    FACES 

tive,  and  had  an  honest  hatred  of  being 
gossiped  about.  He  called  the  malignant 
critics  and  chatterers  '  mosquitos.'  He  never 
felt  any  pleasure  at  praise  (except  from 
his  friends),  but  he  felt  a  great  pain  at  the 
injustice  of  censure.  It  never  occurred  to  him 
that  a  new  poet  in  the  days  of  his  youth  was 
sure  to  provoke  dangerous  hostilities  in  the 
'  genus  irritabile  vatum '  and  in  the  old- 
fashioned  public." 

It  might  almost  be  said,  indeed,  that  had  it 
not  been  for  the  ministrations,  first  of  his 
beloved  wife,  and  then  of  his  sons,  Tennyson's 
life  would  have  been  one  long  warfare  between 
the  attitude  of  his  splendid  intellect  towards 
the  universe  and  the  response  of  his  nervous 
system  to  human  criticism.  From  his  very 
childhood  he  seems  to  have  had  that  instinct 
for  confronting  the  universe  as  a  whole  which, 
except  in  the  case  of  Shakespeare,  is  not  often 
seen  among  poets.  Star-gazing  and  speculation 
as  to  the  meaning  of  the  stars  and  what  was 
going  on  in  them  seem  to  have  begun  in  his 
childhood.  In  his  first  Cambridge  letter  to  his 
aunt,  Mrs.  Russell,  written  from  No.  12,  Rose 
Crescent,  he  says,  "  I  am  sitting  owl-like  and 
solitary  in  my  room,  nothing  between  me  and 
the  stars  but  a  stratum  of  tiles."  And  his  son 
tells  us  of  a  story  current  in  the  family  that 
Frederick,  when  an  Eton  schoolboy,  was  shy 
of  going  to  a  neighbouring  dinner-party  to  which 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   137 

he  had  been  invited.  "  Fred,"  said  his  younger 
brother,  "  think  of  Herschel's  great  star-patches, 
and  you  will  soon  get  over  all  that."  He  had 
Wordsworth's  passion,  too,  for  communing  with 
Nature  alone.  He  was  one  of  Nature's  elect 
who  knew  that  even  the  company  of  a  dear  and 
intimate  friend,  howsoever  close,  is  a  disturbance 
of  the  delight  that  intercourse  with  her  can 
afford  to  the  true  devotee.  In  a  letter  to  his 
future  wife,  written  from  Mablethorpe  in  1839, 
he  says  : — 

"  I  am  not  so  able  as  in  old  years  to  commune 
alone  with  Nature ....  Dim  mystic  sympathies 
with  tree  and  hill  reaching  far  back  into  child- 
hood, a  known  landskip  is  to  me  an  old  friend, 
that  continually  talks  to  me  of  my  own  youth 
and  half-forgotten  things,  and  indeed  does  more 
for  me  than  many  an  old  friend  that  I  know. 
An  old  park  is  my  delight,  and  I  could  tumble 
about  it  for  ever." 

Moreover,  he  was  always  speculating  upon  the 
mystery  and  the  wonder  of  the  human  story. 
"  The  far  future,"  he  says  in  a  letter  to  Miss 
Sellwood,  written  from  High  Beech  in  Epping 
Forest,  "  has  been  my  world  always."  And 
yet  so  powerless  is  reason  in  that  dire  wrestle 
with  temperament  which  most  poets  know, 
that  with  all  these  causes  for  despising  criticism 
of  his  work,  Tennyson  was  as  sensitive  to 
critical  strictures  as  Wordsworth  was  in- 
different. "  He  fancied,"  says  his  biographer, 


138  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

"  that  England  was  an  unsympathetic  atmo- 
sphere, and  half  resolved  to  live  abroad  in 
Jersey,  in  the  South  of  France,  or  in  Italy.  He 
was  so  far  persuaded  that  the  English  people 
would  never  care  for  his  poetry,  that,  had  it  not 
been  for  the  intervention  of  his  friends,  he 
declared  it  not  unlikely  that  after  the  death  of 
Hallam  he  would  not  have  continued  to  write." 
And  again,  in  reference  to  the  completion  of 
'  The  Sleeping  Beauty,'  his  son  says,  "  He 
warmed  to  his  work  because  there  had  been  a 
favourable  review  of  him  lately  published  in 
far-off  Calcutta." 

We  dwell  upon  this  weakness  of  Tennyson's 
— a  weakness  which,  in  view  of  his  immense 
powers,  was  certainly  a  source  of  wonder  to  his 
friends — in  order  to  show,  once  for  all,  that 
without  the  tender  care  of  his  son  he  could 
never  in  his  later  years  have  done  the  work  he 
did.  This  it  was  which  caused  the  relations 
between  Tennyson  and  the  writer  of  this 
admirable  memoir  to  be  those  of  brother  with 
brother  rather  than  of  father  with  son.  And 
those  who  have  been  eagerly  looking  forward  to 
these  volumes  will  not  be  disappointed.  In 
writing  the  life  of  any  man  there  are  scores  and 
scores  of  facts  and  documents,  great  and  small, 
which  only  some  person  closely  acquainted  with 
him,  either  as  relative  or  as  friend,  can  bring 
into  their  true  light ;  and  this  it  is  which  makes 
documents  so  deceptive.  Here  is  an  instance  of 
what  we  mean.  In  writing  to  Thompson,  Sped- 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   139 

ding  says  of  Tennyson  on  a  certain  occasion : 
"  I  could  not  get  Alfred  to  Rydal  Mount.  He 
would  and  would  not  (sulky  one  !),  although 
Wordsworth  was  hospitably  minded  towards 
him."  This  remark  would  inevitably  have 
been  construed  into  another  instance  of  that 
churlishness  which  is  so  often  said  (though  quite 
erroneously)  to  have  been  one  of  Tennyson's 
infirmities.  But  when  we  read  the  following 
foot-note  by  the  biographer,  "  He  said  he  did 
not  wish  to  intrude  himself  on  the  great  man  at 
Rydal,"  we  accept  the  incident  as  another  proof 
of  that  "  humility  "  which  the  son  alludes  to  in 
his  preface  as  being  one  of  his  father's  character- 
istics. And  of  such  evidence  that  had  not  the 
poet's  son  written  his  biography  the  loss  to 
literature  would  have  been  incalculable  the 
book  is  full.  Evidence  of  a  fine  intellect,  a  fine 
culture,  and  a  sure  judgment  is  afforded  by  every 
page — afforded  as  much  by  what  is  left  unsaid 
as  by  what  is  said. 

The  biographer  has  invited  a  few  of  the 
poet's  friends  to  furnish  their  impressions  of 
him.  These  could  not  fail  to  be  interesting  ;  it 
is  pleasant  to  know  what  impression  Tennyson 
made  upon  men  of  such  diverse  characters  as  the 
Duke  of  Argyll,  Jowett,  Tyndall,  Froude,  and 
others.  But  so  far  as  a  vital  portrait  of  the 
man  is  concerned  they  were  not  needed,  so 
vigorously  does  the  man  live  in  the  portrait 
painted  by  him  who  knew  the  poet  best  of  all. 


140  OLD   FAMILIAR    FACES 

"  For  my  own  part,"  says  the  biographer, 
"  I  feel  strongly  that  no  biographer  could  so 
truly  give  him  as  he  gives  himself  in  his  own 
works;  but  this  may  be  because,  having  lived 
my  life  with  him,  I  see  him  in  every  word  which 
he  has  written ;  and  it  is  difficult  for  me  so 
far  to  detach  myself  from  the  home  circle  as  to 
pourtray  him  for  others.  There  is  also  the 
impossibility  of  fathoming  a  great  man's  mind  ; 
his  deeper  thoughts  are  hardly  ever  revealed. 
He  himself  disliked  the  notion  of  a  long,  formal 
biography,  for 

None  can  truly  write  his  single  day, 
And  none  can  write  it  for  him  upon  earth. 

"  However,  he  wished  that,  if  I  deemed  it 
better,  the  incidents  of  his  life  should  be 
given  as  shortly  as  might  be  without  comment, 
but  that  my  notes  should  be  final  and  full 
enough  to  preclude  the  chance  of  further  and 
unauthentic  biographies. 

"  For  those  who  cared  to  know  about  his 
literary  history  he  wrote  '  Merlin  and  the 
Gleam/  From  his  boyhood  he  had  felt 
the  magic  of  Merlin — that  spirit  of  poetry — 
which  bade  him  know  his  power  and  follow 
throughout  his  work  a  pure  and  high  ideal, 
with  a  simple  and  single  devotedness  and  a 
desire  to  ennoble  the  life  of  the  world,  and 
which  helped  him  through  doubts  and  diffi- 
culties to  '  endure  as  seeing  Him  who  is  in- 
visibb.' 

Great  the  Master, 

And  sweet  the  Magic, 

When  over  the  valley, 

In  early  summers, 


ALFRED,   LORD   TENNYSON       141 

Over  the  mountain, 
On  human  faces, 
And  all  around  me, 
Moving1  to  melody, 
Floated  the  Gleam. 

"  In  his  youth  he  sang  of  the  brook  flowing 
through  his  upland  valley,  of  the  '  ridged 
wolds  '  that  rose  above  his  home,  of  the  moun- 
tain-glen and  snowy  summits  of  his  early 
dreams,  and  of  the  beings,  heroes  and  fairies, 
with  which  his  imaginary  world  was  peopled. 
Then  was  heard  the  'croak  of  the  raven/  the 
harsh  voice  of  those  who  were  unsympathetic — 

The  light  retreated, 

The  Landskip  darken'd, 

The  melody  deaden'd, 

The  Master  whisper'd, 

'  Follow  the  Gleam.' 

"  Still  the  inward  voice  told  him  not  to  be 
faint-hearted  but  to  follow  his  ideal.  And  by  the 
delight  in  his  own  romantic  fancy,  and  by  the 
harmonies  of  nature,  '  the  warble  of  water,'  and 
'  cataract  music  of  falling  torrents/  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  poet  was  renewed.  His  Eclogues 
and  English  Idyls  followed,  when  he  sang  the 
songs  of  country  life  and  the  joys  and  griefs  of 
country  folk,  which  he  knew  through  and 
through, 

Innocent  maidens, 
Garrulous  children, 
Homestead  and  harvest, 
Reaper  and  gleaner, 
And  rough-ruddy  faces 
Of  lowly  labour. 

"  By  degrees,  having  learnt  somewhat  of  the 
real  philosophy  of  life  and  of  humanity  from  his 
own  experience,  he  rose  to  a  melody  '  stronger 


142  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

and  statelier.'  He  celebrated  the  glory  of 
'  human  love  and  of  human  heroism  '  and  of 
human  thought,  and  began  what  he  had  already 
devised,  his  epic  of  King  Arthur,  '  typifying 
above  all  things  the  life  of  man/  wherein  he 
had  intended  to  represent  some  of  the  great 
religions  of  the  world.  He  had  purposed  that 
this  was  to  be  the  chief  work  of  his  manhood. 
Yet  the  death  of  his  friend,  Arthur  Hallam,  and 
the  consequent  darkening  of  the  whole  world 
for  him  made  him  almost  fail  in  this  purpose  ; 
nor  any  longer  for  a  while  did  he  rejoice  in  the 
splendour  of  his  spiritual  visions,  nor  in  the 
Gleam  that  had  '  waned  to  a  wintry  glimmer.' 

Clouds  and  darkness 
Closed  upon  Camelot ; 
Arthur  had  vanish'd 
I  knew  not  whither, 
The  King-  who  loved  me, 
And  cannot  die. 

"  Here  my  father  united  the  two  Arthurs,  the 
Arthur  of  the  Idylls  and  the  Arthur  '  the  man 
he  held  as  half  divine.'  He  himself  had  fought 
with  death,  and  had  come  out  victorious  to 
find  '  a  stronger  faith  his  own,'  and  a  hope  for 
himself,  for  all  those  in  sorrow  and  for  uni- 
versal human  kind,  that  never  forsook  him 
through  the  future  years. 

And  broader  and  brighter 
The  Gleam  flying-  onward, 
Wed  to  the  melody, 
Sang-  thro'  the  world. 
*  *  * 

I  saw,  wherever 

In  passing-  it  glanced  upon 

Hamlet  or  city, 

That  under  the  Crosses 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   143 

The  dead  man's  garden, 
The  mortal  hillock, 
Would  break  into  blossom  ; 
And  so  to  the  land's 
Last  limit  I  came. 

"  Up  to  the  end  he  faced  death  with  the  same 
earnest  and  unfailing  courage  that  he  had 
always  shown,  but  with  an  added  sense  of  the 
awe  and  the  mystery  of  the  Infinite. 

I  can  no  longer, 

But  die  rejoicing1, 

For  thro'  the  Magic 

Of  Him  the  Mighty, 

Who  taught  me  in  childhood, 

There  on  the  border 

Of  boundless  Ocean, 

And  all  but  in  Heaven 

Hovers  the  Gleam. 

"  That  is  the  reading  of  the  poet's  riddle  as 
he  gave  it  to  me.  He  thought  that '  Merlin  and 
the  Gleam  '  would  probably  be  enough  of  bio- 
graphy for  those  friends  who  urged  him  to 
write  about  himself.  However,  this  has  not 
been  their  verdict,  and  I  have  tried  to  do  what 
he  said  that  I  might  do." 

There  are  many  specialists  in  Tennysonian 
bibliography  who  take  a  pride  (and  a  worthy 
pride)  in  their  knowledge  of  the  master's  poems. 
But  the  knowledge  of  all  of  these  specialists 
put  together  is  not  equal  to  that  of  him  who 
writes  this  book.  Not  only  is  every  line  at  hir 
fingers'  ends,  but  he  knows,  either  from  his  own 
memory  or  from  what  his  father  has  told  him, 
where  and  when  and  why  every  line  was  written. 
He,  however,  shares,  it  is  evident  that  dislike — 


144  OLD   FAMILIAR .  FACES 

rather  let  us  say  that  passionate  hatred — 
which  his  father,  like  so  many  other  poets,  had 
of  that  well-intentioned  but  vexing  being  whom 
Rossetti  anathematized  as  the  "  literary  resur- 
rection man."  Rossetti  used  to  say  that  "  of 
all  signs  that  a  man  was  devoid  of  poetic 
instinct  and  poetic  feeling  the  impulse  of  the 
literary  resurrectionist  was  the  surest."  Without 
going  so  far  as  this  we  may  at  least  affirm  that 
all  poets  writing  in  a  language  requiring,  as 
English  does,  much  manipulation  before  it  can 
be  moulded  into  perfect  form  must  needs  revise 
in  the  brain  before  the  line  is  set  down,  or  in 
manuscript,  as  Shelley  did,  or  partly  in  manu- 
script and  partly  in  type,  as  Coleridge  did. 
But  the  rakers-up  of  the  "  chips  of  the  work- 
shop," to  use  Tennyson's  own  phrase,  seem  to 
have  been  specially  irritating  to  him,  because  he 
belonged  to  those  poets  who  cannot  really  revise 
and  complete  their  work  till  they  see  it  in  type. 
"  Poetry,"  he  said,  "  looks  better,  more  con- 
vincing in  print." 

"  From  the  volume  of  1832,"  says  his  son, 
"  he  omitted  several  stanzas  of  '  The  Palace  of 
Art '  because  he  thought  that  the  poem  was  too 
full.  '  The  artist  is  known  by  his  self-limita- 
tion '  was  a  favourite  adage  of  his.  He  allowed 
me,  however,  to  print  some  of  them  in  my 
notes,  otherwise  I  should  have  hesitated  to 
quote  without  his  leave  lines  that  he  had  ex- 
cised. He  '  gave  the  people  of  his  best,'  and 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   145 

he  usually  wished  that  his  best  should  remain 
without  variorum  readings,  '  the  chips  of  the 
workshop/  as  he  called  them.  The  love  of 
bibliomaniacs  for  first  editions  filled  him  with 
horror,  for  the  first  editions  are  obviously  in 
many  cases  the  worst  editions,  and  once  he  said 
to  me  :  '  Why  do  they  treasure  the  rubbish  I 
shot  from  my  full-finish'd  cantos  ? ' 

rrjiriot,   oi'Se    tiracriv    oVy    irXfov  yjuav  7ravT<5s. 

For  himself  many  passages  in  Wordsworth  and 
other  poets  have  been  entirely  spoilt  by  the 
modern  habit  of  giving  every  various  reading 
along  with  the  text.  Besides,  in  his  case, 
very  often  what  is  published  as  the  latest  edi- 
tion has  been  the  original  version  in  his  first 
manuscript,  so  that  there  is  no  possibility  of 
really  tracing  the  history  of  what  may  seem  to 
be  a  new  word  or  a  new  passage.  '  For  in- 
stance/ he  said,  'in  "  Maud "  a  line  in  the 
first  edition  was  '  I  will  bury  myself  in  my  books, 
and  the  Devil  may  pipe  to  his  own/  which  was 
afterwards  altered  to  '  I  will  bury  myself  in 
myself,  &c/  :  this  was  highly  commended  by 
the  critics  as  an  improvement  on  the  original 
reading — but  it  was  actually  in  the  first  MS. 
draft  of  the  poem." 

Again,  it  is  important  to  get  a  statement  by 
one  entitled  to  speak  with  authority  as  to  what 
Tennyson  did  and  what  he  did  not  believe 
upon  religious  matters.  He  had  in  '  In  Memo- 
riam  '  and  other  poems  touched  with  a  hand  so 


146  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

strong  and  sometimes  so  daring  upon  the  teach- 
ing of  modern  science,  and  yet  he  had  spoken 
always  so  reverently  of  what  modern  civilization 
reverences,  that  the  most  opposite  lessons  were 
read  from  his  utterances.  To  one  thinker  it 
would  seem  that  Tennyson  had  thrown  himself 
boldly  upon  the  very  foremost  wave  of  scientific 
thought.  To  another  it  would  seem  that 
Wordsworth  (although,  living  and  writing  when 
he  did,  before  the  birth  of  the  new  cosmogony, 
he  believed  himself  to  be  still  in  trammels  of  the 
old)  was  by  temperament  far  more  in  touch 
with  the  new  cosmogony  than  was  Tennyson, 
who  studied  evolution  more  ardently  than  any 
poet  since  Lucretius.  While  Wordsworth,  not- 
withstanding a  conventional  phrase  here  and 
there,  had  an  apprehension  of  Nature  without 
the  ever-present  idea  of  the  Power  behind  her, 
Spinosa  himself  was  not  so  "  God-intoxicated  " 
a  man  as  Tennyson.  His  son  sets  the  question 
at  rest  in  the  following  pregnant  words  : — 

"  Assuredly  Religion  was  no  nebulous  ab- 
straction for  him.  He  consistently  emphasized 
his  own  belief  in  what  he  called  the  Eternal 
Truths  ;  in  an  Omnipotent,  Omnipresent,  and 
All-loving  God,  Who  has  revealed  Himself 
through  the  human  attribute  of  the  highest 
self-sacrificing  love ;  in  the  freedom  of  the 
human  will ;  and  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 
But  he  asserted  that  '  Nothing  worthy  proving 
can  be  proven,'  and  that  even  as  to  the  great 
laws  which  are  the  basis  of  Science,  'We  have 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   147 

but  faith,  we  cannot  know.'  He  dreaded  the 
dogmatism  of  sects  and  rash  definitions  of  God. 
'  I  dare  hardly  name  His  Name,'  he  would  say, 
and  accordingly  he  named  Him  in  '  The  Ancient 
Sage  '  the  '  Nameless/  '  But  take  away  belief 
in  the  self-conscious  personality  of  God/  he 
said,  '  and  you  take  away  the  backbone  of  the 
world/  'On  God  and  God-like  men  we  build 
our  trust/  A  week  before  his  death  I  was 
sitting  by  him,  and  he  talked  long  of  the  Person- 
ality and  of  the  Love  of  God,  '  That  God, 
Whose  eyes  consider  the  poor/  '  Who  catereth, 
even  for  the  sparrow/  '  I  should/  he  said, 
'  infinitely  rather  feel  myself  the  most  miserable 
wretch  on  the  face  of  the  earth  with  a  God 
above,  than  the  highest  type  of  man  standing 
alone/  He  would  allow  that  God  is  unknow- 
able in  '  his  whole  world-self,  and  all-in-all/  and 
that,  therefore,  there  was  some  force  in  the 
objection  made  by  some  people  to  the  word 
'  Personality  '  as  being  '  anthropomorphic/  and 
that,  perhaps  '  Self-consciousness  '  or  '  Mind  ' 
might  be  clearer  to  them  :  but  at  the  same  time 
he  insisted  that,  although  '  man  is  like  a  thing 
of  nought '  in  '  the  boundless  plan/  our  highest 
view  of  God  must  be  more  or  less  anthropo- 
morphic :  and  that  '  Personality/  as  far  as  our 
intelligence  goes,  is  the  widest  definition  and 
includes  '  Mind/  '  Self-consciousness/  '  Will/ 
'  Love/  and  other  attributes  of  the  Real,  the 
Supreme,  '  the  High  and  Lofty  One  that  inhabi- 
teth  Eternity,  Whose  name  is  Holy/  ' 
And  then  Lord  Tennyson  quotes  a  manuscript 
note  of  Jowett's  in  which  he  says  : — 
"  Alfred  Tennyson  thinks  it  ridiculous  to 


148  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

believe  in  a  God  and  deny  his  consciousness, 
and  was  amused  at  some  one  who  said  of  him 
that  he  had  versified  Hegelianism." 

He  notes  also  an  anecdote  of  Edward  Fitz- 
gerald's which  speaks  of  a  week  with  Tennyson, 
when  the  poet,  picking  up  a  daisy,  and  looking 
closely  at  its  crimson-tipped  leaves,  said,  "  Does 
not  this  look  like  a  thinking  Artificer,  one  who 
wishes  to  ornament  ?  " 

Here  is  a  paragraph  which  will  be  read  with 
the  deepest  interest,  not  only  by  every  lover  of 
poetry,  but  by  every  man  whose  heart  has  been 
rung  by  the  most  terrible  of  all  bereavements — 
the  loss  of  a  beloved  friend.  Close  as  the  tie  of 
blood  relationship  undoubtedly  is,  it  is  based 
upon  convention  as  much  as  upon  nature.  It 
may  exist  and  flourish  vigorously  when  there  is 
little  or  no  community  of  taste  or  of  thought : — 

"  It  may  be  as  well  to  say  here  that  all  the 
letters  from  my  father  to  Arthur  Hallam  were 
destroyed  by  his  father  after  Arthur's  death  : 
a  great  loss,  as  these  particular  letters  probably 
revealed  his  inner  self  more  truly  than  anything 
outside  his  poems." 

We  confess  to  belonging  to  those  who  always 
read  with  a  twinge  of  remorse  the  private 
letters  of  a  man  in  print.  But  if  there  is  a  case 
where  one  must  needs  long  to  see  the  letters 
between  two  intimate  friends,  it  is  that  of 
Tennyson  and  Arthur  Hallam.  They  would 
have  been  only  second  in  interest  to  Shake- 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   149 

speare's  letters  to  that  mysterious  "  Mr.  W.  H." 
whose  identity  now  can  never  be  traced.  For, 
notwithstanding  all  that  has  recently  been  said, 
and  ably  said,  to  the  contrary,  the  man  to  whom 
many  of  the  sonnets  were  addressed  was  he 
whom  "  T.  T."  addresses  as  "  Mr.  W.  H." 

But  for  an  intimacy  to  be  so  strong  as  that 
which  existed  between  Tennyson  and  Arthur  H. 
Hallam  there  must  be  a  kinship  of  soul  so  close 
and  so  rare  that  the  tie  of  blood  relationship 
seems  weak  beside  it.  It  is  then  that  friendship 
may  sometimes  pass  from  a  sentiment  into  a 
passion.  It  did  so  in  the  case  of  Shakespeare 
and  his  mysterious  friend,  as  the  sonnets  in 
question  make  manifest ;  but  we  are  not 
aware  that  there  is  in  English  literature  any 
other  instance  of  friendship  as  a  passion  until 
we  get  to  '  In  Memoriam.'  So  profound  was 
the  effect  of  Hallam's  death  upon  Tennyson 
that  it  was  the  origin,  his  son  tells  us,  of  '  The 
Two  Voices  ;  or,  Thoughts  of  a  Suicide.'  What 
was  the  secret  of  Hallam's  influence  over 
Tennyson  can  never  be  guessed  from  anything 
that  he  has  left  behind  either  in  prose  or  verse. 
But  besides  the  creative  genius  of  the  artist 
there  is  that  genius  of  personality  which  is 
irresistible.  With  a  very  large  gift  of  this  kind 
of  genius  Arthur  Hallam  seems  to  have  been 
endowed. 

"  In  the  letters  from  Arthur  Hallam's  friends," 
says  Lord  Tennyson,  "  there  was  a  rare  unani- 


150  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

mity  of  opinion  about  his  worth.  Milnes, 
writing  to  his  father,  says  that  he  had  a 
'  very  deep  respect '  for  Hallam,  and  that 
Thirlwall,  in  after  years  the  great  bishop, 
for  whom  Hallam  and  my  father  had  a  pro- 
found affection,  was  '  actually  captivated  by 
him.'  When  at  Cambridge  with  Hallam  he 
had  written  :  '  He  is  the  only  man  here  of  my 
own  standing  before  whom  I  bow  in  conscious 
inferiority  in  everything.'  Alford  writes : 
'  Hallam  was  a  man  of  wonderful  mind  and 
knowledge  on  all  subjects,  hardly  credible  at 

his  age 1  long  ago  set  him  down  for  the 

most  wonderful  person  I  ever  knew.  He  was 
of  the  most  tender,  affectionate  disposition.' 

Lord  Tennyson's  remarks  upon  the  '  Idylls 
of  the  King,'  and  upon  the  enormous  success 
of  the  book  have  a  special  interest,  and  serve 
to  illustrate  our  opening  remarks  upon  the 
popularity  of  his  father's  works.  Popular  as 
Tennyson  had  become  through  '  The  Gar- 
dener's Daughter,'  '  The  Miller's  Daughter,' 
'The  May  Queen,'  'The  Lord  of  Burleigh,' 
and  scores  of  other  poems — endeared  to  every 
sorrowing  heart  as  he  had  become  through  '  In 
Memoriam  ' — it  was  the  '  Idylls  of  the  King  ' 
that  secured  for  him  his  unique  place. 
Many  explanations  of  the  phenomenon  of  a 
true  poet  securing  the  popular  suffrages  have 
been  offered,  one  of  them  being  his  acceptance 
of  the  Laureateship.  But  Wordsworth,  a  great 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   151 

poet,  also  accepted  it ;  and  he  never  was  and 
never  will  be  popular.  The  wisdom  of  what 
Goethe  says  about  the  enormous  importance 
of  "  subject  "  in  poetic  art  is  illustrated  by 
the  story  of  Tennyson  and  the  '  Idylls  of  the 
King/ 

For  what  was  there  in  the  '  Idylls  of  the 
King  '  that  brought  all  England  to  Tennyson's 
feet — made  English  people  re-read  with  a  new 
seeing  in  their  eyes  the  poems  which  they  once 
thought  merely  beautiful,  but  now  thought  half 
divine  ?  Beautiful  these  '  Idylls  '  are  indeed, 
but  they  are  not  more  beautiful  than  work  of 
his  that  went  before.  The  rich  Klondyke  of 
Malory  and  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  had  not 
escaped  the  eyes  of  previous  prospectors.  All 
his  life  Milton  had  dreamed  of  the  mines  lying 
concealed  in  the  "  misty  mid-region  "  of  King 
Arthur  and  the  Round  Table,  but,  luckily  for 
Tennyson,  was  led  away  from  it  into  other 
paths.  With  Milton's  immense  power  of  sen- 
suous expression — a  power  that  impelled  him, 
even  when  dealing  with  the  spirit  world,  to 
flash  upon  our  senses  pictures  of  the  very  limbs 
of  angels  and  fiends  at  fight — we  may  imagine 
what  an  epic  of  King  Arthur  he  would  have 
produced.  Dryden  also  contemplated  working 
in  this  mine,  but  never  did ;  and  until  Scott 
came  with  his  Lyulph's  Tale  in  '  The  Bridal  of 
Triermain/  no  one  had  taken  up  the  subject 
but  writers  like  Blackmore.  Then  came  Bui- 


152  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

wer's  burlesque.  Now  no  prospector  on  the 
banks  of  the  Yukon  has  a  keener  eye  for  nuggets 
than  Tennyson  had  for  poetic  ore,  and  besides 
'  The  Lady  of  Shalott '  and  '  Launcelot  and 
Guinevere/  he  had  already  printed  the  grandest 
of  all  his  poems — the  '  Morte  d' Arthur.'  It 
needed  only  the  '  Idylls  of  the  King/  where 
episode  after  episode  of  the  Arthurian  cycle  was 
rendered  in  poems  which  could  be  understood 
by  all — it  needed  only  this  for  all  England  to 
be  set  reading  and  re-reading  all  his  poems, 
some  of  them  more  precious  than  any  of  these 
'  Idylls  ' — poems  whose  familiar  beauties  shone 
out  now  with  a  new  light. 

Ever  since  then  Tennyson's  hold  upon  the 
British  public  seemed  to  grow  stronger  and 
stronger  up  to  the  day  of  his  death,  when  Great 
Britain,  and,  indeed,  the  entire  English-speaking 
race,  went  into  mourning  for  him  ;  nor,  as  we 
have  said,  has  any  weakening  of  that  hold  been 
perceptible  during  the  five  years  that  have 
elapsed  since. 

The  volumes  are  so  crammed  with  interesting 
and  important  matter  that  to  discuss  them  in 
one  article  is  impossible.  But  before  concluding 
these  remarks  we  must  say  that  the  good  fortune 
which  attended  Tennyson  during  his  life  did  not 
end  with  his  death.  Fortunate,  indeed,  is  the 
famous  man  who  escapes  the  catchpenny  bio- 
grapher. No  man  so  illustrious  as  Tennyson 
ever  before  passed  away  without  his  death 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   153 

giving  rise  to  a  flood  of  books  professing  to  tell 
the  story  of  his  life.  Yet  it  chanced  that  for  a 
long  time  before  his  death  a  monograph  on 
Tennyson  by  Mr.  Arthur  Waugh — which,  though 
of  course  it  is  sometimes  at  fault,  was  carefully 
prepared  and  well  considered — had  been  in 
preparation,  as  had  also  a  second  edition  of 
another  sketch  of  the  poet's  life  by  Mr.  Henry 
Jennings,  written  with  equal  reticence  and 
judgment.  These  two  books,  coming  out,  as 
far  as  we  remember,  in  the  very  week  of  Tenny- 
son's funeral,  did  the  good  service  of  filling  up 
the  gap  of  five  years  until  the  appearance 
of  this  authorized  biography  by  his  son. 
Otherwise  there  is  no  knowing  what  pseudo- 
biographies  stuffed  with  what  errors  and 
nonsense  might  have  flooded  the  market  and 
vexed  the  souls  of  Tennysonian  students.  For 
the  future  such  pseudo-biographies  will  be 
impossible. 


III. 

NOTWITHSTANDING  the  apparently 
fortunate  circumstances  by  which 
Tennyson  was  surrounded,  the  record 
of  his  early  life  produces  in  the  reader's 
mind  a  sense  of  unhappiness.  Happiness 
is  an  affair  of  temperament,  not  of  outward 
circumstances.  Happy,  in  the  sense  of 
enjoying  the  present  as  Wordsworth  enjoyed  it, 
Tennyson  could  never  be.  Once,  no  doubt, 
Nature's  sweetest  gift  to  all  living  things — the 
power  of  enjoying  the  present — was  man's 
inheritance  too.  Some  of  the  human  family 
have  not  lost  it  even  yet ;  but  poets  are  rarely 
of  these.  Give  Wordsworth  any  pittance,  enough 
to  satisfy  the  simplest  physical  wants — enough 
to  procure  him  plain  living  and  leisure  for  "  high 
thinking  " — and  he  would  be  happier  than 
Tennyson  would  have  been,  cracking  the  finest 
"  walnuts  "  and  sipping  the  richest  "  wine  " 
amidst  a  circle  of  admiring  and  powerful  friends. 
As  to  opinion,  as  to  criticism  of  his  work — 
what  was  that  to  Wordsworth  ?  Had  he  not 
from  the  first  the  good  opinion  of  her  of  whom 
he  was  the  high  priest  elect.  Natura  Benigna 
herself  ?  Nay,  had  he  not  from  the  first  the 
good  opinions  of  Wordsworth  himself  and 
Dorothy  ?  Without  this  faculty  of  enjoying  the 

154 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   155 

present,  how  can  a  bard  be  happy  ?  For 
the  present  alone  exists.  The  past  is  a  dream  ; 
the  future  is  a  dream  ;  the  present  is  the  narrow 
plank  thrown  for  an  instant  from  the  dream  of 
the  past  to  the  dream  of  the  future.  And  yet 
it  is  the  poet  (who  of  all  men  should  enjoy  the 
raree  show  hurrying  and  scrambling  along  the 
plank) — it  is  he  who  refuses  to  enjoy  himself 
on  his  own  trembling  little  plank  in  order  to 
"  stare  round  "  from  side  to  side. 

Spedding,  speaking  in  a  letter  to  Thompson 
in  1835  of  Tennyson's  visit  to  the  Lake  country, 
lets  fall  a  few  words  that  describe  the  poet  in 
the  period  before  his  marriage  more  fully  than 
could  have  been  done  by  a  volume  of  subtle 
analvsis  : — 

t/ 

"  I  think  he  took  in  more  pleasure  and  inspira- 
tion than  any  one  would  have  supposed  who  did 
not  know  his  own  almost  personal  dislike  of  the 
present,  whatever  it  might  be." 
This  is  what  makes  us  say  that  by  far  the  most 
important  thing  in  Tennyson's  life  was  his 
marriage.  He  began  to  enjoy  the  present : 
"  The  peace  of  God  came  into  my  life  before  the 
altar  when  I  wedded  her."  No  more  beautiful 
words  than  these  were  ever  uttered  by  any  man 
concerning  any  woman.  And  to  say  that  the 
words  were  Tennyson's  is  to  say  that  they 
expressed  the  simple  truth,  for  his  definition  of 
human  speech  as  God  meant  it  to  be  would  have 
been  "  the  breath  that  utters  truth."  It  would 


156  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

have  been  wonderful,  indeed,  if  he,  whose  capa- 
city of  loving  a  friend  was  so  great  had  been 
without  an  equal  capacity  of  loving  a  woman. 

"  Although  as  a  son,"  says  the  biographer, 
"  I  cannot  allow  myself  full  utterance  about  her 
whom  I  loved  as  perfect  mother  and  '  very 
woman  of  very  woman  '  —  'such  a  wife '  and 
true  helpmate  she  proved  herself.  It  was  she 
who  became  my  father's  adviser  in  literary 
matters ;  '  I  am  proud  of  her  intellect,'  he 
wrote.  With  her  he  always  discussed  what  he 
was  working  at ;  she  transcribed  his  poems  :  to 
her  and  to  no  one  else  he  referred  for  a  final 
criticism  before  publishing.  She,  with  her 
'  tender,  spiritual  nature,'*  and  instinctive 
nobility  of  thought,  was  always  by  his  side,  a 
ready,  cheerful,  courageous,  wise,  and  sym- 
pathetic counsellor.  It  was  she  who  shielded 
his  sensitive  spirit  from  the  annoyances  and 
trials  of  life,  answering  (for  example)  the  innu- 
merable letters  addressed  to  him  from  all  parts 
of  the  world.  By  her  quiet  sense  of  humour, 
by  her  selfless  devotion,  by  '  her  faith  as  clear  as 
the  heights  of  the  June-blue  heaven,'  she  helped 
him  also  to  the  utmost  in  the  hours  of  his 
depression  and  of  his  sorrow." 

There  are  some  few  people  whose  natures 
are  so  noble  or  so  sweet  that  how  rich]  soever 
may  be  their  endowment  of  intellect,  or  even 
of  genius,  we  seem  to  remember  them  mainly 

*  "My  father's  words." 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   157 

by  what  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen  calls  "  the 
rhetoric  of  their  lives."  And  surely  the 
knowledge  that  this  is  so  is  encouraging  to 
him  who  would  fain  believe  in  the  high  destiny 
of  man  —  surely  it  is  encouraging  to  know 
that,  in  spite  of  "  the  inhuman  dearth  of 
noble  natures,"  mankind  can  still  so  dearly 
love  moral  beauty  as  to  hold  it  more  precious 
than  any  other  human  force.  And  certainly 
one  of  those  whose  intellectual  endowments  are 
outdazzled  by  the  beauty  of  their  qualities  of 
heart  and  soul  was  the  sweet  lady  whose  death 
I  am  recording. 

Among  those  who  had  the  privilege  of  knowing 
Lady  Tennyson  (and  they  were  many,  and  these 
many  were  of  the  best),  some  are  at  this  moment 
eloquent  in  talk  about  the  perfect  helpmate  she 
was  to  the  great  poet,  and  the  perfect  mother 
she  was  to  his  children,  and  they  quote  those 
lovely  lines  of  Tennyson  which  every  one  knows 
by  heart : — 

Dear,  near  and  true — no  truer  Time  himself 
Can  prove  you,  tho'  he  make  you  evermore 
Dearer  and  nearer,  as  the  rapid  of  life 
Shoots  to  to  the  fall — take  this  and  pray  that  he 
Who  wrote  it,  honouring  your  sweet  faith  to  him, 
May  trust  himself ; — and  after  praise  and  scorn, 
As  one  who  feels  the  immeasurable  world, 
Attain  the  wise  indifference  of  the  wise ; 
And  after  autumn  past — if  left  to  pass 
His  autumn  into  seeming  leafless  days — 
Draw  toward  the  long  frost  and  longest  night, 
Wearing  his  wisdom  lightly,  like  the  fruit 
Which  in  our  winter  woodland  looks  a  flower. 


158  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

Others  dwell  on  the  unique  way  in  which 
those  wistful  blue  eyes  of  hers  and  that  beautiful 
face  expressed  the  "  tender  spiritual  nature  " 
described  by  the  poet — expressed  it,  indeed, 
more  and  more  eloquently  with  the  passage  of 
years,  and  the  bereavements  the  years  had 
brought.  The  present  writer  saw  her  within 
a  few  days  of  her  death.  She  did  not  seem  to 
him  then  more  fragile  than  ordinary.  For 
many  years  she  whose  fragile  frame  seemed  to 
be  kept  alive  by  the  love  and  sweet  movements 
of  the  soul  within  had  seemed  as  she  lay  upon 
her  couch  the  same  as  she  seemed  when  death 
was  so  near — intensely  pale,  save  when  a  flush 
as  slight  as  the  pink  on  a  wild  rose  told  her 
watchful  son  that  the  subject  of  conversation 
was  interesting  her  more  than  was  well  for  her. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  Lady  Tennyson 
was  no  less  remarkable  as  an  intelligence  than 
as  the  central  heart  of  love  and  light  that 
illumined  one  of  the  most  beautiful  households 
of  our  time. 

Though  her  special  gift  was  no  doubt  music, 
she  had,  as  Tennyson  would  say  with  affectionate 
pride,  a  "  real  insight  into  poetical  effects  "  ; 
and  those  who  knew  her  best  shared  his  opinion 
in  this  matter.  Whether,  had  her  life  not  been 
devoted  so  entirely  to  others,  she  would  have 
been  a  noticeable  artistic  producer  it  is  hard  to 
guess.  But  there  is  no  doubt  that  she  was 
born  to  hold  a  high  place  as  a  conversationalist, 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   159 

brilliant  and  stimulating.  Notwithstanding  the 
jealous  watchfulness  of  her  family  lest  the 
dinner  talk  should  draw  too  heavily  upon  her 
small  stock  of  physical  power,  the  fascination 
of  her  conversation,  both  as  to  subject-matter 
and  manner,  was  so  irresistible  that  her  friends 
were  apt  to  forget  how  fragile  she  really  was 
until  warned  by  a  sign  from  her  son  or,  daughter- 
in-law,  who  adored  her,  that  the  conversation 
should  be  brought  to  a  close. 

Her  diary,  upon  which  her  son  has  drawn  for 
certain  biographical  portions  of  his  book  shows 
how  keen  and  how  persistent  was  her  interest 
in  the  poetry  of  her  husband ;  it  also  shows 
how  thorough  was  her  insight  into  its  principles. 
As  a  rule,  diaries,  professing  as  they  do  to  give 
portraitures  of  eminent  men,  are  mostly  very 
much  worse  than  worthless.  The  points  seized 
upon  by  the  diarist  are  almost  never  physiogno- 
mic, and  even  if  the  diarist  does  give  some 
glimpse  of  the  character  he  professes  to  limn, 
the  picture  can  only  be  partially  true,  inasmuch 
as  it  can  never  be  toned  down  by  other  aspects 
of  the  character  unseen  by  the  diarist  and 
unknown  to  him. 

Very  different,  however,  is  the  record  kept  by 
Lady  Tennyson.  As  an  instance  of  her  power  of 
selecting  really  luminous  points  for  preservation 
in  her  diary,  let  me  instance  this.  Many  a 
student  of  the  '  Idylls  of  the  King '  has  been 
struck  by  a  certain  difference  in  the  style 


160  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

between  '  The  Coming  of  Arthur '  and  '  The 
Passing  of  Arthur '  and  the  other  idylls.  In- 
deed, more  than  once  this  difference  has  been 
cited  as  showing  Tennyson's  inability  to  fuse  the 
different  portions  of  a  long  poem.  This  fact 
had  not  escaped  the  eye  of  the  loving  wife  and 
critic,  and  two  days  before  her  death  she  said 
to  her  son,  "  He  said  '  The  Coming  of  Arthur  ' 
and  '  The  Passing  of  Arthur '  are  purposely 
simpler  in  style  than  the  other  idylls  as  dealing 
with  the  awfulness  of  birth  and  death,"  and 
wished  this  remark  of  the  poet's  to  be  put  on 
record  in  the  book. 

It  is  needless  to  comment  on  the  value  of 
these  few  words  and  the  light  they  shed  upon 
Tennyson's  method. 

Those  who  saw  Lady  Tennyson  in  middle 
life  and  in  advanced  age,  and  were  struck  by 
that  spiritual  beauty  of  hers  which  no  painter 
could  ever  render,  will  not  find  it  difficult  to 
imagine  what  she  was  at  seventeen,  when 
Tennyson  suddenly  came  upon  her  in  the 
"  Fairy  Wood,"  and  exclaimed,  "  Are  you  an 
Oread  or  a  Dryad  wandering  here  ?  "  And  yet 
her  beauty  was  only  a  small  part  of  a  charm 
that  was  indescribable.  An  important  event  for 
English  literature  was  that  meeting  in  the 
"  Fairy  Wood."  For,  from  the  moment  of  his 
engagement,  "  the  current  of  his  mind  was  no 
longer  and  constantly  in  the  channel  of  mourn- 
ful memories  and  melancholy  forebodings," 


ALFRED,    LORD   TENNYSON       161 

says  his  son.  And  speaking  of  the  year,  1838, 
the  son  tells  us  that,  on  the  whole,  he  was 
happy  in  his  life.  "  When  I  wrote  '  The  Two 
Voices/ '  he  used  to  say,  "  I  was  so  utterly 
miserable,  a  burden  to  myself  and  my  family, 
that  I  said, '  Is  life  worth  anything  ?  '  and  now 
that  I  am  old,  I  fear  that  I  shall  only  live  a 
year  or  two,  for  I  have  work  still  to  do." 

The  hostile  manner  in  which  '  Maud '  was 
received  vexed  him,  and  would,  before  his 
marriage,  have  deeply  disturbed  him.  A  right 
view  of  this  fine  poem  seems  to  have  been  taken 
by  George  Brimley,  an  admirable  critic,  who  in 
the  '  Cambridge  Essays,'  had  already  pointed 
out  with  great  acumen  many  of  the  more  subtle 
beauties  of  Tennyson. 

There  are  few  more  pleasant  pages  in  this 
book  than  those  which  record  Tennyson's 
relations  with  another  poet  who  was  blessed  in 
his  wife — Browning.  Although  the  two  poets 
had  previously  met  (notably  in  Paris  in  1851), 
the  intimacy  between  them  would  seem  to  have 
been  cemented,  if  not  begun,  during  one  of 
Tennyson's  visits  to  his  and  Browning's  friends, 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Knowles  at  the  Hollies,  Clapham 
Common.  Here  Tennyson  read  io  Browning 
the  '  Grail '  (which  the  latter  pronounced  to  be 
Tannyson's  "  best  and  highest  ")  ;  and  here 
Browning  came  and  read  his  own  new  poem 
'  The  Ring  and  the  Book,'  when  Tennyson's 
verdict  on  it  was,  "  Full  of  strange  vigour  and 


M 


162  OLD    FAMILIAR    FACES 

remarkable  in  many  ways,   doubtful  if  it  will 
ever  be  popular." 

The  record  of  his  long  intimacy  with  Coventry 
Patmore  and  Aubrey  de  Vere  takes  an  important 
place  in  the  biography,  and  the  reminiscences 
of  Tennyson  by  the  latter  poet  form  an  interest- 
ing feature  of  the  volumes.  In  George  Mere- 
dith's first  little  book  Tennyson  was  delighted 
by  the  '  Love  in  a  Valley/  and  he  had  a  full 
appreciation  of  the  great  novelist  all  round. 
With  the  three  leading  poets  of  a  younger 
generation,  Rossetti,  William  Morris,  and  Swin- 
burne, he  had  slight  acquaintance.  Here,  how- 
ever, is  an  interesting  memorandum  by  Tenny- 
son recording  his  first  meeting  with  Swinburne  : 

"  I  may  tell  you,  however,  that  young  Swin- 
burne called  here  the  other  day  with  a  college 
friend  of  his,  and  we  asked  him  to  dinner,  and 
I  thought  him  a  very  modest  and  intelligent 
young  fellow.  Moreover  I  read  him  what  you 
vindicated  ['  Maud '],  but  what  I  particularly 
admired  in  him  was  that  he  did  not  press  upon 
me  any  verses  of  his  own." 

Of  contemporary  novels  he  seems  to  have 
been  a  voracious  and  indiscriminate  reader. 
In  the  long  list  here  given  of  novelists  whose 
books  he  read — good,  bad,  and  indifferent — it 
is  curious  not  to  find  the  name  of  Mrs.  Hum- 
phry Ward.  With  Thackeray  he  was  intimate  ; 
and  he  was  in  cordial  relations  with  Dickens, 
Douglas  Jerrold,  and  George  Eliot.  Among 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   163 

the  poets,  besides  Edward  Fitzgerald  and 
Coventry  Patmore,  he  saw  much  of  William 
Allingham.  Though  he  admired  parts  of 
'  Festus '  greatly,  we  do  not  gather  from  these 
volumes  that  he  met  the  author.  Dobell  he 
saw  much  of  a.t  Malvern  in  1846.  The  letter- 
diary  from  Tennyson  during  his  stay  in  Corn- 
wall with  Holman  Hunt,  Val.  Prinsep,  Woolner, 
and  Palgrave,  shows  how  exhilarated  he  could 
be  by  wind  and  sea.  The  death  of  Lionel  was 
a  sad  blow  to  him.  '  Demeter,  and  other 
Poems/  was  dedicated  to  Lord  Dufferin,  "  as 
a  tribute,"  says  his  son,  "  of  affection  and  of 
gratitude  ;  for  words  would  fail  me  to  tell  the 
unremitting  kindness  shown  by  himself  and 
Lady  Dufferin  to  my  brother  Lionel  during 
his  fatal  illness." 

Tennyson's  critical  insight  could  not  fail  to 
be  good  when  exercised  upon  poetry.  Here 
are  one  or  two  of  his  sayings  about  Burns, 
which  show  in  what  spirit  he  would  have  read 
Henley's  recent  utterances  about  that  poet : — 

"  Burns  did  for  the  old  songs  of  Scotland 
almost  what  Shakespeare  had  done  for  the 
English  drama  that  preceded  him." 

"  Read  the  exquisite  songs  of  Burns.  In 
shape  each  of  them  has  the  perfection  of  the 
berry,  in  light  the  radiance  of  the  dew-drop  : 
you  forget  for  its  sake  those  stupid  things  his 
serious  poems." 

Among   the   reminiscences   and   impressions 


164  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

of  the  poet  which  Lord  Tennyson  has  appended 
to  his  second  volume,  it  is  only  fair  to  specialize 
the  admirable  paper  by  F.  T.  Palgrave,  which, 
long  as  it  is,  is  not  by  one  word  too  long.  That 
Jowett  would  write  wisely  and  well  was  in  the 
nature  of  things.  The  only  contribution,  how- 
ever, we  can  quote  here  is  Froude's,  for  it  is  as 
brief  as  it  is  emphatic  : — 

"  I  owe  to  your  father  the  first  serious  re- 
flexions upon  life  and  the  nature  of  it  which 
have  followed  me  for  more  than  fifty  years. 
The  same  voice  speaks  to  me  now  as  I  come 
near  my  own  end,  from  beyond  the  bar.  Of  the 
early  poems, '  Love  and  Death  '  had  the  deepest 
effect  upon  me.  The  same  thought  is  in  the 
last  lines  of  the  last  poems  which  we  shall  ever 
have  from  him. 

"  Your  father  in  my  estimate,  stands,  and 
will  stand  far  away  by  the  side  of  Shakespeare 
above  all  other  English  Poets,  with  this  relative 
superiority  even  to  Shakespeare,  that  he  speaks 
the  thoughts  and  speaks  to  the  perplexities  and 
misgivings  of  his  own  age. 

"  He  was  born  at  the  fit  time,  before  the 
world  had  grown  inflated  with  the  vanity  of 
Progress,  and  there  was  still  an  atmosphere  in 
which  such  a  soul  could  grow.  There  will  be 
no  such  others  for  many  a  long  age." 
"  Yours  gratefully, 

"  J.  A.  FROUDE." 

This  letter  is  striking  evidence  of  the  in- 
fluence Tennyson  had  upon  his  contemporaries. 
Comparisons,  however,  between  Shakespeare 


ALFRED,   LORD   TENNYSON       165 

and  other  poets  can  hardly  be  satisfactory.  A 
kinship  between  him  and  any  other  poet  can 
only  be  discovered  in  relation  to  one  of  the 
many  sides  of  the  "  myriad-minded "  man. 
Where  lies  Tennyson's  kinship  ?  Is  it  on  the 
dramatic  side  ?  In  a  certain  sense  Tennyson 
possessed  dramatic  power  undoubtedly ;  for 
he  had  a  fine  imagination  of  extraordinary 
vividness,  and  could,  as  in  '  Rizpah,'  make  a 
character  live  in  an  imagined  situation.  But 
to  write  a  vital  play  requires  more  than  this  : 
it  requires  a  knowledge — partly  instinctive  and 
partly  acquired — of  men  as  well  as  of  man,  and 
especially  of  the  way  in  which  one  individual 
acts  and  reacts  upon  another  in  the  complex 
web  of  human  life.  To  depict  the  workings  of 
the  soul  of  man  in  a  given  situation  is  one  thing 
—to  depict  the  impact  of  ego  upon  ego  is  another. 
When  we  consider  that  the  more  poetical  a  poet 
is  the  more  oblivious  we  expect  him  to  be  of  the 
machinery  of  social  life,  it  is  no  wonder  that 
poetical  dramatists  are  so  rare.  In  drama, 
even  poetic  drama,  the  poet  must  leave  the 
"  golden  clime  "  in  which  he  was  born,  must 
leave  those  "  golden  stars  above  "  in  order  to 
learn  this  machinery,  and  not  only  learn  it,  but 
take  a  pleasure  in  learning  it. 

In  honest  admiration  of  Tennyson's  dramatic 
work,  where  it  is  admirable,  we  yield  to  none, 
at  the  time  when  '  The  Foresters '  was  some- 
what coldly  accepted  by  the  press  on  account  of 


166  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

its  "  lack  of  virility,"  we  considered  that  in  the 
class  to  which  it  belonged,  the  scenic  pastoral 
plays,  it  held  a  very  worthy  place.  That 
Tennyson's  admiration  for  Shakespeare  was 
unbounded  is  evident  enough. 

"  There  was  no  one/'  says  Jowett  in  his 
recollections  of  Tennyson,  "  to  whom  he 
was  so  absolutely  devoted,  no  poet  of  whom 
he  had  a  more  intimate  knowledge  than 
Shakespeare.  He  said  to  me,  and  probably 
to  many  others,  that  there  was  one  intellec- 
tual process  in  the  world  of  which  he  could 
not  even  entertain  an  apprehension  —  that 
was  the  plays  of  Shakespeare.  He  thought 
that  he  could  instinctively  distinguish  between 
the  genuine  and  the  spurious  in  them,  e.g.,  be- 
tween those  parts  of  '  King  Henry  VIII.,'  which 
are  generally  admitted  to  be  spurious,  and  those 
that  are  genuine.  The  same  thought  was  partly 
working  in  his  mind  on  another  occasion,  when 
he  spoke  of  two  things,  which  he  conceived  to 
be  beyond  the  intelligence  of  man,  and  it  was 
certainly  not  repeated  by  him  from  any  irre- 
verence ;  the  one,  the  intellectual  genius  of 
Shakespeare — the  other,  the  religious  genius  of 
Jesus  Christ." 

And  in  the  pathetic  account  of  Tennyson's 
last  moments  we  find  it  recorded  that  on  the 
Tuesday  before  the  Wednesday  on  which  he 
died,  he  called  out,  "  Where  is  my  Shakespeare  ? 
I  must  have  my  Shakespeare  "  ;  and  again  on 
the  day  of  his  death,  when  the  breath  was 
passing  out  of  his  body,  he  asked  for  his  Shake- 


ALFRED,    LORD    TENNYSON       167 

speare.  All  this,  however,  makes  it  the  more 
remarkable  that  of  poets  Shakespeare  had  the 
least  influence  upon  Tennyson's  art.  There 
was  a  fundamental  unlikeness  between  the 
genius  of  the  two  men.  The  only  point  in 
common  between  them  is  that  each  in  his  own 
way  captivated  the  suffrages  both  of  the  many 
and  of  the  fit  though  few,  notwithstanding  the 
fact  that  their  methods  of  dramatic  approach  in 
their  plays  are  absolutely  and  fundamentally 
different.  Even  their  very  methods  of  writing 
verse  are  entirely  different.  Tennyson's  blank 
verse  seems  at  its  best  to  combine  the  beauties 
of  the  Miltonic  and  the  Wordsworthian  line  ; 
while  nothing  is  so  rare  in  his  work  as  a  Shake- 
spearean line.  Now  and  then  such  a  line  as 

Authority  forgets  a  dying  king 

turns  up,  but  very  rarely.  We  agree  with  all 
Professor  Jebb  says  in  praise  of  Tennyson's 
blank  verse. 

"  He  has  known,"  says  he,  "  how  to  modu- 
late it  to  every  theme,  and  to  elicit  a  music 
appropriate  to  each  ;  attuning  it  in  turn  to 
a  tender  and  homely  grace,  as  in  '  The 
Gardener's  Daughter  '  ;  to  the  severe  and  ideal 
majesty  of  the  antique,  as  in  '  Tithonus  '  ;  to 
meditative  thought,  as  in  '  The  Ancient  Sage,' 
or  '  Akbar's  Dream  '  ;  to  pathetic  or  tragic  tales 
of  contemporary  life,  as  in  '  Aylmer's  Field,'  or 
'  Enoch  Arden  '  ;  or  to  sustained  romance  narra- 
tive, as  in  the  '  Idylls.'  No  English  poet  has 
used  blank  verse  with  such  flexible  variety,  or 


i68  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

drawn  from  it  so  large  a  compass  of  tones  ;  nor 
has  any  maintained  it  so  equably  on  a  high  level 
of  excellence." 

But  we  fail  to  see  where  he  touched  Shake- 
speare on  the  dramatic  side  of  Shakespeare's 
immense  genius. 

Tennyson  had  the  yearning  common  to  all 
English  poets  to  write  Shakespearean  plays, 
and  the  filial  piety  with  which  his  son  tries 
to  uphold  his  father's  claims  as  a  dramatist 
is  beautiful ;  indeed,  it  is  pathetic.  But  the 
greatest  injustice  that  can  be  done  to  a  great 
poet  is  to  claim  for  him  honours  that  do  not 
belong  to  him.  In  his  own  line  Tennyson  is 
supreme,  and  this  book  makes  it  necessary 
to  ask  once  more  what  that  line  is.  Shake- 
speare's stupendous  fame  has  for  centuries 
been  the  candle  into  which  all  the  various 
coloured  wings  of  later  days  have  flown  with 
more  or  less  of  disaster.  Though  much  was 
said  in  praise  of  '  Harold '  by  one  of  the  most 
accomplished  critics  and  scholars  of  our  time, 
Dr.  Jebb,*  the  play  could  not  keep  the  stage, 
nor  does  it  live  as  a  drama  as  any  one  of  Tenny- 
son's lyrics  can  be  said  to  live.  '  Becket,'  to 
be  sure,  was  a  success  on  the  stage.  A  letter 
to  Tennyson  in  1884  from  so  competent  a 
student  of  Shakespeare  as  Sir  Henry  Irving 
declares  that  '  Becket '  is  a  finer  play  than 
'  King  John.'  Still,  the  '  Morte  df Arthur/  '  The 

*  The  Times,  October  18,  1876 


ALFRED,   LORD   TENNYSON       169 

Lotos-Eaters/  '  The  Gardener's  Daughter,'  out- 
weigh the  five-act  tragedy  in  the  world  of 
literary  art.  Of  acted  drama  Tennyson  knew 
nothing  at  all.  To  him,  evidently,  the  word  act 
in  a  printed  play  meant  chapter ;  the  word 
scene  meant  section.  In  his  early  days  he  had 
gone  occasionally  to  see  a  play,  and  in  1875  he 
went  to  see  Irving  in  Hamlet  and  liked  him 
better  than  Macready,  whom  he  had  seen  in  the 
part.  Still  later  he  went  to  see  Lady  Archibald 
Campbell  act  when  '  Becket '  was  given  "  among 
the  glades  of  oak  and  fern  in  the  Canizzaro 
Wood  at  Wimbledon."  But  handicapped  as 
he  was  by  ignorance  of  drama  as  a  stage 
product  how  could  he  write  Shakespearean 
plays  ? 

But  let  us  for  a  moment  consider  the  differ- 
ence between  the  two  men  as  poets.  It  is  hard 
to  imagine  the  master-dramatist  of  the  world — 
it  is  hard  to  imagine  the  poet  who,  by  setting 
his  foot  upon  allegory,  saved  our  poetry  from 
drying  up  after  the  invasion  of  gongorism, 
euphuism,  and  allegory — it  is,  we  say,  hard  to 
imagine  Shakespeare,  if  he  had  conceived  and 
written  such  lovely  episodes  as  those  of  the 
'  Idylls  of  the  King,'  so  full  of  concrete  pictures, 
setting  about  to  turn  his  flesh-and-blood  cha- 
racters into  symbolic  abstractions.  There  is 
in  these  volumes  a  curious  document,  a  memo- 
randum of  Tennyson's  presented  to  Mr.  Knowles 
at  Aldworth  in  1869,  in  which  an  elaborate 


170  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

scheme   for   turning   into   abstract   ideas   the 
characters  of  the  Arthurian  story  is  sketched  : — 

K.A.  Religious  Faith. 

King-  Arthur's  three  Guineveres. 

The  Lady  of  the  Lake. 

Two  Guineveres,  y"  first  prim  Christianity.  2a  Roman 
Catholicism  :  ye  first  is  put  away  and  dwells  apart,  2d 
Guinevere  flies.  Arthur  takes  to  the  first  again,  but  finds 
her  changed  by  lapse  of  Time. 

Modred,  the  sceptical  understanding.  He  pulls 
Guinevere,  Arthur's  latest  wife,  from  the  throne. 

Merlin  Emrys,  the  Enchanter.  Science.  Marries  his 
daughter  to  Modred. 

Excalibur,  War. 

The  Sea,  the  people       \  the  S.  are  a  sea-people  and 

The  Saxons,  the  people/  it  is  theirs  and  a  type  of  them 

The  Round  Table  :    liberal  institutions. 

Battle  of  Camlan. 

2d  Guinevere  with  the  enchanted  book  and  cup. 

And  Mr.  Knowles  in  a  letter  to  the  biographer 
says  : — 

"  He  encouraged  me  to  write  a  short  paper, 
in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  The  Spectator,  on  the 
inner  meaning  of  the  whole  poem,  which  I  did, 
simply  upon  the  lines  he  himself  indicated.  He 
often  said,  however,  that  an  allegory  should 
never  be  pressed  too  far." 
Are  all  the  lovely  passages  of  human  passion 
and  human  pathos  in  these  '  Idylls '  allegorical 
— that  is  to  say — make-believe  ?  The  reason 
why  allegorical  poetry  is  always  second-rate, 
even  at  its  best,  is  that  it  flatters  the  reader's 
intellect  at  the  expense  of  his  heart.  Fancy 
"  the  allegorical  intent  "  behind  the  parting  of 
Hector  and  Andromache,  and  behind  the  death 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   171 

of  Desdemona !  Thank  Heaven,  however, 
Tennyson's  allegorical  intent  was  a  destructive 
afterthought.  For,  says  the  biographer,  "  the 
allegorical  drift  here  marked  out  was  funda- 
mentally changed  in  the  later  schemes  in  the 
'  Idylls/  "  According  to  that  delicate  critic, 
Canon  Ainger,  there  is  a  symbolical  intent  under- 
lying '  The  Lady  of  Shalott ' : — 

'  The  new-born  love  for  something,  for  some 
one  in  the  wide  world  from  whom  she  has  been 
so  long  secluded,  takes  her  out  of  the  region  of 
shadows  into  that  of  realities." 

But  what  concerns  us  here  is  the  fact  that 
when  Shakespeare  wrote,  although  he  yielded 
too  much  now  and  then  to  the  passion  for 
gongorism  and  euphuism  which  had  spread  all 
over  Europe,  it  was  against  the  nature  of  his 
genius  to  be  influenced  by  the  contemporary 
passion  for  allegory.  That  he  had  a  natural 
dislike  of  allegorical  treatment  of  a  subject 
is  evident,  not  only  in  his  plays,  but  in 
his  sonnets.  At  a  time  when  the  sonnet 
was  treated  as  the  special  vehicle  for 
allegory,  Shakespeare's  sonnets  were  the 
direct  outcome  of  emotion  of  the  most 
intimate  and  personal  kind — a  fact  which  at 
once  destroys  the  ignorant  drivel  about  the 
Baconian  authorship  of  Shakespeare's  plays, 
for  what  Bacon  had  was  fancy,  not  imagination, 
and  Fancy  is  the  mother  of  Allegory,  Imagina- 
tion is  the  mother  of  Drama.  The  moment  that 


172  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

Bacon   essayed   imaginative   work,   he   passed 
into  allegory,  as  we  see  in  the  '  New  Atlantis.' 

It  might,  perhaps,  be  said  that  there  are 
three  kinds  of  poetical  temperament  which 
have  never  yet  been  found  equally  combined 
in  any  one  poet — not  even  in  Shakespeare  him- 
self. There  is  the  lyric  temperament,  as  exem- 
plified in  writers  like  Sappho,  Shelley,  and  others; 
there  is  the  meditative  temperament — some- 
times speculative,  but  not  always  accompanied 
by  metaphysical  dreaming — as  exemplified  in 
Lucretius,  Wordsworth,  and  others  ;  and  there 
is  the  dramatic  temperament,  as  exemplified  in 
Homer,  ^Eschylus,  Sophocles,  and  Shakespeare. 
In  a  certain  sense  the  Iliad  is  the  most  dramatic 
poem  in  the  world,  for  the  dramatic  picture 
lives  undisturbed  by  lyrism  or  meditation.  In 
^Eschylus  and  Sophocles  we  find,  besides  the 
dramatic  temperament,  a  large  amount  of  the 
lyrical  temperament,  and  a  large  amount 
of  the  meditative,  but  unaccompanied  by 
metaphysical  speculation.  In  Shakespeare  we 
find,  besides  the  dramatic  temperament,  a 
large  amount  of  the  meditative  accompanied 
by  an  irresistible  impulse  towards  metaphysical 
speculation,  but,  on  the  whole,  a  moderate  en- 
dowment of  the  lyrical  temperament,  judging 
by  the  few  occasions  on  which  he  exercised 
it.  For  fine  as  are  such  lyrics  as  "  Hark, 
hark,  the  lark,"  "Where  the  bee  sucks,"  &c., 
other  poets  have  written  lyrics  as  fine. 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   173 

In  a  certain  sense  no  man  can  be  a  pure  and 
perfect  dramatist.  Every  ego  is  a  central  sun 
found  which  the  universe  revolves,  and  it  must 
needs  assert  itself.  This  is  why  on  a  previous 
occasion,  when  speaking  of  the  way  in  which 
thoughts  are  interjected  into  drama  by  the 
Greek  dramatists,  we  said  that  really  and  truly 
no  man  can  paint  another,  but  only  himself, 
and  what  we  call  character-painting  is  at  the 
best  but  a  poor  mixing  of  painter  and  painted — 
a  third  something  between  these  two,  just  as 
what  we  call  colour  and  sound  are  born  of  the 
play  of  undulation  upon  organism.  Very  likely 
this  is  putting  the  case  too  strongly.  But  be 
this  as  it  may,  it  is  impossible  to  open  a  play  of 
Shakespeare's  without  being  struck  with  the 
way  in  which  the  meditative  side  of  Shake- 
speare's mind  strove  with  and  sometimes  nearly 
strangled  the  dramatic.  If  this  were  confined 
to  '  Hamlet/  where  the  play  seems  meant  to 
revolve  on  a  philosophical  pivot,  it  would  not 
be  so  remarkable.  But  so  hindered  with 
thoughts,  reflections,  meditations,  and  meta- 
physical speculations  was  Shakespeare  that  he 
tossed  them  indiscriminately  into  other  plays, 
tragedies,  comedies,  and  histories,  regardless 
sometimes  of  the  character  who  uttered  them. 
With  regard  to  metaphysical  speculation,  in- 
deed, even  when  he  was  at  work  on  the  busiest 
scenes  of  his  dramas,  it  would  seem — as  was  said 
on  the  occasion  before  alluded  to — that  Shake- 


174  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

speare's  instinct  for  actualizing  and  embodying 
in  concrete  form  the  dreams  of  the  meta- 
physician often  arose  and  baffled  him.  It  would 
seem  that  when  writing  a  comedy  he  could  not 
help  putting  into  the  mouth  of  a  man  like 
Claudio  those  words  which  seem  as  if  they  ought 
to  have  been  spoken  by  a  metaphysician  of  the 
Hamlet  type,  beginning, 

Ay,  but  to  die  and  go  we  know  not  where. 

It  would  seem  that  he  could  not  help  putting 
into  the  mouth  of  Macbeth  those  words  which 
also  seem  as  if  they  ought  to  have  been  spoken 
on  the  platform  at  Elsinore,  beginning, 

To-morrow  and  to-morrow  and  to-morrow. 

And  if  it  be  said  that  Macbeth  was  a  philosopher 
as  well  as  a  murderer,  and  might  have  thought 
these  thoughts  in  the  terrible  strait  in  which  he 
then  was,  surely  nothing  but  this  marvellous 
peculiarity  of  Shakespeare's  temperament  will 
explain  his  making  Macbeth  stop  at  Duncan's 
bedroom  door,  dagger  in  hand,  to  say, 

Now  o'er  the  one  half  world  Nature  seems  dead,  &c. 

And  again,  though  Prospero  was  very  likely  a 
philosopher  too,  even  he  steals  from  Hamlet's 
mouth  such  words  of  the  metaphysician  as 
these  : — 

We  are  such  stuff 

As  dreams  are  made  on,  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep. 

That  this  is  one  of  Shakespeare's  most 
striking  characteristics  will  not  be  denied  by 
any  competent  student  of  his  works.  Nor  will 


ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON   175 

any  such  student  deny  that,  exquisite  as  his 
lyrics  are,  they  are  too  few  and  too  unimportant 
in  subject-matter  to  set  beside  his  supreme 
wealth  of  dramatic  picture,  and  his  wide  vision 
as  a  thinker  and  a  metaphysical  dreamer. 

Now  on  which  of  these  sides  of  Shakespeare 
does  Tennyson  touch  ?  Is  it  on  the  lyrical 
side  ?  Shakespeare's  fine  lyrics  are  so  few  that 
they  would  be  lost  if  set  beside  the  marvellous 
wealth  of  Tennyson's  lyrical  work.  On  one 
side  only  of  Shakespeare's  genius  Tennyson 
touches,  perhaps,  more  closely  than  any  subse- 
quent poet.  As  a  metaphysician  none  comes 
so  near  Shakespeare  as  he  who  wrote  these 
lines : — 

And  more,  my  son  1    for  more  than  once  when  I 
Sat  all  alone,  revolving  in  myself 
The  word  that  is  the  symbol  of  myself, 
The  mortal  limit  of  the  Self  was  loosed, 
And  passed  into  the  Nameless,  as  a  cloud 
Melts  into  Heaven.     I  touch'd  my  limbs,  the  limbs 
Were  strange  not  mine — and  yet  no  shade  of  doubt, 
But  utter  clearness,  and  thro'  loss  of  Self. 
The  gain  of  such  large  life  as  match'd  with  ours 
Were  Sun  to  spark — unshadowable  in  words, 
Themselves  but  shadows  of  a  shadow-world. 

Here,  then,  seems  to  be  the  truth  of  the  matter  : 
while  Shakespeare  had  immense  dramatic  power, 
and  immense  meditative  power  with  moderate 
lyric  power,  Tennyson  had  the  lyric  gift  and  the 
meditative  gift  without  the  dramatic.  His 
poems  are  more  full  of  reflections,  meditations, 
and  generalizations  upon  human  life  than  any 
poet's  since  Shakespeare.  But  then  the  moment 


176  OLD   FAMILIAR    FACES 

that  Shakespeare  descended  from  those  heights 
whether  his  metaphysical  imagination  had 
borne  him,  he  became,  not  a  lyrist,  as  Tennyson 
became,  but  a  dramatist.  And  this  divides 
Shakespeare  as  far  from  Tennyson  as  it  divides 
him  from  any  other  first-class  writer.  We 
admirers  of  Tennyson  must  content  ourselves 
with  this  thought,  that,  wonderful  as  it  is  for 
Shakespeare  to  have  combined  great  meta- 
physical power  with  supreme  power  as  a 
dramatist,  it  is  scarcely  less  wonderful  for 
Tennyson  to  have  combined  great  metaphysical 
power  with  the  power  of  a  supreme  lyrist. 
Nay,  is  it  not  in  a  certain  sense  more 
wonderful  for  a  lyrical  impulse  such  as  Tenny- 
son's to  be  found  combined  with  a  power  of 
philosophical  and  metaphysical  abstraction  such 
as  he  shows  in  some  of  his  poems  ? 


IV. 
CHRISTINA   GEORGINA    ROSSETTI. 

1830-1894. 
i. 

ALTHOUGH  the  noble  poet  and  high- 
souled  woman  we  have  just  lost  had 
been  ill  and  suffering  from  grievous 
pain  for  a  long  time,  Death  came  at  last  with 
a  soft  hand  which  could  but  make  him 
welcome.  Since  early  in  August,  when  she 
took  to  her  bed,  she  was  so  extremely  weak 
and  otherwise  ill  that  one  scarcely  expected 
her  (at  any  time)  to  live  more  than  a  month 
or  so,  and  for  the  last  six  weeks  or  there- 
abouts— say  from  the  I5th  of  November — 
one  expected  her  to  die  almost  from  day  to 
day.  My  dear  friend  William  Rossetti,  who 
used  to  go  to  Torrington  Square  every  afternoon, 
saw  her  on  the  afternoon  of  December  28th 
[1894].  He  did  not,  he  told  me,  much  expect 
to  find  her  alive  in  the  afternoon  of  the  29th,  and 
intended,  therefore,  to  make  his  next  call 
earlier.  She  died  at  half-past  seven  in  the 
morning  of  the  29th,  in  the  presence  only  of  her 
faithful  nurse  Mrs.  Read.  It  was  through  her 
sudden  collapse  that  she  missed  at  her  side, 

177  N 


178  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

when  she  passed  away,  that  brother  whose 
whole  life  has  been  one  of  devotion  to  his 
family,  and  whose  tireless  affection  for  the  last 
of  them  was  one  of  the  few  links  that  bound 
Christina's  sympathy  to  the  earth. 

Her  illness  was  of  a  most  complicated  kind  : 
two  years  and  a  half  ago  she  was  operated  on 
for  cancer  :  functional  malady  of  the  heart, 
accompanied  by  dropsy  in  the  left  arm  and 
hand,  followed.  Although  on  Friday  the  serious 
symptoms  of  her  case  became,  as  I  have  said, 
accentuated,  she  was  throughout  the  day  and 
night  entirely  conscious  ;  and  so  peaceful  and 
apparently  so  free  from  pain  was  she  that  neither 
the  medical  man  nor  the  nurse  supposed  the 
end  to  be  quite  so  near  as  it  was.  During  all 
this  time,  up  to  the  moment  of  actual  dissolu- 
tion, her  lips  seemed  to  be  moving  in  prayer, 
but,  of  course,  this  with  her  was  no  uncommon 
sign  :  duty  and  prayer  ordered  her  life.  Her 
sufferings,  I  say,  had  been  great,  but  they  had 
been  encountered  by  a  fortitude  that  was 
greater  still.  Throughout  all  her  life,  indeed, 
she  was  the  most  notable  example  that  our  time 
has  produced  of  the  masterful  power  of  man's 
spiritual  nature  when  at  its  highest  to  conquer 
in  its  warfare  with  earthly  conditions,  as  her 
brother  Gabriel's  life  was  the  most  notable 
example  of  the  struggle  of  the  spiritual  nature 
with  the  bodily  when  the  two  are  equally 
equipped.  It  is  the  conviction  of  one  whose 


l-'rom  a  crayon-di  awing  by  II.  (,'.  A'ossi-fti  reproduced  by  the  kind  permission  of 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI   179 

high  privilege  it  was  to  know  her  in  many  a 
passage  of  sorrow  and  trial  that  of  all  the  poets 
who  have  lived  and  died  within  our  time, 
Christina  Rossetti  must  have  had  the  noblest 
soul. 

A  certain  irritability  of  temper,  which  was, 
perhaps,  natural  to  her,  had,  when  I  first 
became  acquainted  with  her  family  (about 
1872),  been  overcome,  or  at  least  greatly 
chastened,  by  religion  (which  with  her  was  a 
passion)  and  by  a  large  acquaintance  with  grief, 
resulting  in  a  long  meditation  over  the  mystery 
of  pain.  In  wordly  matters  her  generosity  may 
be  described  as  boundless ;  but  perhaps  it  is 
not  difficult  for  a  poet  to  be  generous  in  a 
worldly  sense — to  be  free  in  parting  with  that 
which  can  be  precious  only  to  commonplace 
souls.  What,  however,  is  not  so  easy  is  for  one 
holding  such  strong  religious  convictions  as 
Christina  Rossetti  held  to  cherish  such  generous 
thoughts  and  feelings  as  were  hers  about  those 
to  whom  her  shibboleths  meant  nothing.  This 
was  what  made  her  life  so  beautiful  and  such 
a  blessing  to  all.  The  indurating  effects  of  a 
selfish  religiosity  never  withered  her  soul  nor 
narrowed  it.  With  her,  indeed,  religion  was 
very  love — 

A  largess  universal  like  the  sun. 

It  is  always  futile  to  make  guesses  as  to  what 
might  have  been  the  development  of  a  poet's 
genius  and  character  had  the  education  of 


i8o  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

circumstances  been  different  from  what  it  was, 
and  perhaps  it  is  specially  futile  to  guess  what 
would  have  been  the  development  under  other 
circumstances  of  her,  the  poet  of  whom  her 
friends  used  to  speak  with  affection  and  rever- 
ence as  "  Christina." 

On  the  death  of  her  brother  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti  (or  as  his  friends  used  to  call  him 
Gabriel)  in  1882,  I  gave  that  sketch  of  the 
family  story  which  has  formed  the  basis  of 
most  of  the  biographical  notices  of  him  and 
his  family ;  it  would,  therefore,  be  super- 
fluous to  reiterate  what  I  said  and  what  is 
now  matter  of  familiar  knowledge.  It  may, 
however,  be  as  well  to  remind  the  reader  that, 
owing  to  the  peculiar  position  in  London  of 
the  father  Gabriele  Rossetti,  the  family  were 
during  childhood  and  partly  during  youth  as 
much  isolated  from  the  outer  English  world  as 
were  the  family  between  whom  and  themselves 
there  were  many  points  of  resemblance — the 
Brontes.  The  two  among  them  who  were  not 
in  youth  of  a  retiring  disposition  were  he  who 
afterwards  became  the  most  retiring  of  all, 
Gabriel,  and  Maria,  the  latter  of  whom  was  in 
one  sense  retiring,  and  in  another  expansive. 
In  her  dark  brown,  or,  as  some  called  them, 
black  eyes,  there  would  suddenly  come  up  and 
shine  an  enthusiasm,  a  capacity  of  poetic  and 
romantic  fire,  to  the  quelling  of  which  there 
must  have  gone  an  immensity  of  religious  force. 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI    181 

As  to  Gabriel,  during  a  large  portion  of  his 
splendid  youth  he  exhibited  a  genial  breadth  of 
front  that  affined  him  to  Shakespeare  and 
Walter  Scott.  The  English  strain  in  the  family 
found  expression  in  him,  and  in  him  alone. 
There  was  a  something  in  the  hearty  ring  of  his 
voice  that  drew  Englishmen  to  him  as  by  a 
magnet. 

While  it  was  but  little  that  the  others  drew 
from  the  rich  soil  of  merry  England,  he  drew 
from  it  half  at  least  of  his  radiant  personality 
— half  at  least  of  his  incomparable  genius. 
Though  he  was  in  every  way  part  and  parcel  of 
that  marvellous  little  family  circle  of  children 
of  genius  in  Charlotte  Street,  he  had  also  the 
power  of  looking  at  it  from  the  outside.  It 
would  be  strange,  indeed,  if  this  or  any  other 
power  should  be  found  lacking  in  him.  I  have 
often  heard  Rossetti — by  the  red  flicker  of  the 
studio  fire,  when  the  gas  was  turned  down  to 
save  his  eyesight — give  the  most  graphic  and 
fascinating  descriptions  of  the  little  group  and 
the  way  in  which  they  grew  up  to  be  what  they 
were  under  the  tuition  of  a  father  whose  career 
can  only  be  called  romantic,  and  a  mother  whose 
intellectual  gifts  were  so  remarkable  that,  had 
they  not  been  in  some  great  degree  stifled  by 
the  exercise  of  an  entire  self-abnegation  on 
behalf  of  her  family,  she,  too,  must  have  become 
an  important  figure  in  literature. 

The  father  died  in  1854,  many  years  before 


182  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

I  knew  the  family ;  but  Gabriel's  description 
of  him  ;  his  conversations  with  his  brother- 
refugees  and  others  who  visited  the  house — 
conversations  in  which  the  dreamy  and  the 
matter-of-fact  were  oddly  blent ;  his  striking 
skill  as  an  improvisatore  of  Italian  poetry,  and 
also  as  a  master  of  pen-and-ink  drawing  ;  his 
great  musical  gift — a  gift  which  none  of  his 
family  seemed  to  have  inherited  ;  his  fine  tenor 
voice ;  his  unflinching  courage  and  independ- 
ence of  character  (qualities  which  made  him 
refuse,  in  a  Protestant  country,  to  make  open 
abjuration  of  the  creed  in  which  the  Rossettis 
had  been  reared,  though  he  detested  the  Pope 
and  all  his  works,  and  was,  if  not  an  actual 
freethinker,  thoroughly  latitudinarian)  —  Ga- 
briel's pictures  of  this  poet  and  father  of  poets 
were  so  vivid — so  amazingly  and  incredibly 
vivid — that  I  find  it  difficult  to  think  I  never 
met  the  father  in  the  flesh  :  not  unfrequently 
I  find  myself  talking  of  him  as  if  I  had  known 
him.  What  higher  tribute  than  this  can  be 
made  to  a  narrator's  dramatic  power  ?  Those 
who  have  seen  the  elder  Rossetti's  pen-and-ink 
drawings  (the  work  of  a  child)  will  agree  with 
me  that  Gabriel  did  not  over-estimate  them  in 
the  least  degree.  All  the  Rossettis  inherited 
from  their  father  voices  so  musical  that  they 
could  be  recognized  among  other  voices  in  any 
gathering,  and  no  doubt  that  clear-cut  method 
of  syllabification  which  was  so  marked  a  cha- 


MRS.    ROSSETTI 

From  a  crayon-drawing  bv  D.  G.  Rossetti  reproduced  by  the  kind  per 
Mr.  It'.  M.  Kossetti 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI   183 

racteristic  of  Christina's  conversation,  but  which 
gave  it  a  sort  of  foreign  tone,  was  inherited  from 
the  father.  Her  affinity  to  the  other  two 
members  of  the  family  was  seen  in  that  intense 
sense  of  duty  of  which  Gabriel,  with  all  his 
generosity,  had  but  little.  There  was  no  mar- 
tyrdom she  would  not  have  undertaken  if  she 
thought  that  duty  called  upon  her  to  undertake 
it,  and  this  may  be  said  of  the  other  two. 

In  most  things,  however,  Christina  Rossetti 
seemed  to  stand  midway  between  Gabriel  and 
the  other  two  members  of  her  family,  and  it 
was  the  same  in  physical  matters.  She  had 
Gabriel's  eyes,  in  which  hazel  and  blue-grey 
were  marvellously  blent,  one  hue  shifting  into 
the  other,  answering  to  the  movements  of  the 
thoughts — eyes  like  the  mother's.  And  her 
brown  hair,  though  less  warm  in  colour  than  his 
during  his  boyhood,  was  still  like  it.  When  a 
young  girl,  at  the  time  that  she  sat  for  the 
Virgin  in  the  picture  now  in  the  National 
Gallery,  she  was,  as  both  her  mother  and 
Gabriel  have  told  me,  really  lovely,  with  an 
extraordinary  expression  of  pensive  sweetness. 
She  used  to  have  in  the  little  back  parlour  a 
portrait  of  herself  at  eighteen  by  Gabriel, 
which  gives  all  these  qualities.  Even  then, 
however,  the  fullness  in  the  eyes  was  somewhat 
excessive.  Afterwards  her  ill  health  took  a 
peculiar  form,  the  effect  of  which  was  that  the 
eyes  were,  in  a  manner  of  speaking,  pushed 


184  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

forward,  and  although  this  protuberance  was 
never  disagreeable,  it  certainly  took  a  good 
deal  of  beauty  from  her  face. 

Dominant,  however,  as  was  the  father's 
personality  among  his  friends,  the  mother's 
influence  upon  the  children  was  stronger  than 
his  ;  and  no  wonder,  for  I  think  there  was  no 
beautiful  charm  of  woman  that  Mrs.  Rossetti 
lacked.  She  did  not  seem  at  all  aware  that  she 
was  a  woman  of  exceptional  gifts,  yet  her  intel- 
lectual penetration  and  the  curious  exactitude 
of  her  knowledge  were  so  remarkable  that 
Gabriel  accepted  her  dicta  as  oracles  not  to  be 
challenged.  One  of  her  specialities  was  the 
pronunciation  of  English  words,  in  which  she 
was  an  authority.  I  cannot  resist  giving  one 
little  instance,  as  it  illustrates  a  sweet  feature  of 
Gabriel's  character.  It  occurred  on  a  lovely 
summer's  day  in  the  old  Kelmscott  manor 
house  in  1873,  when  Mrs.  Rossetti,  Christina, 
and  myself  were  watching  Gabriel  at  work  upon 
'  Proserpine.'  I  had  pronounced  the  word 
aspirant  with  the  accent  upon  the  middle 
syllable.  "  Pardon  me,  my  dear  fellow,"  said 
he,  without  looking  from  his  work,  "  that  word 
should  be  pronounced  with  the  accent  on  the 
first  syllable,  as  a  purist  like  you  ought  to  know." 
On  my  challenging  this,  he  said,  in  a  tone  which 
was  meant  to  show  that  he  was  saying  the  last 
word  upon  the  subject,  "  My  mother  always 
says  aspirant,  and  she  is  always  right  upon 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI     185 

matters  of  pronunciation."  '  Then  I  shall 
always  say  aspirant,"  I  replied.  And  I  may 
add  that  I  now  do  say  aspirant,  and,  right  or 
wrong,  intend  to  say  aspirant  so  long  as  this 
breath  of  mine  enables  me  to  say  aspirant  at 
all.  Afterwards  Christina,  as  we  were  strolling 
by  the  weir,  watching  Gabriel  and  George  Hake 
pounding  across  the  meadows  at  the  rate  of  five 
miles  an  hour,  said  to  me,  "  I  think  you  were 
right  about  aspirant.1'  "  No,"  I  said,  "it  is 
a  dear,  old-fashioned  way.  Your  mother  says 
aspirant ;  I  now  remember  that  my  own 
mother  said  aspirant,  I  shall  stick  to  aspirant 
till  the  end  of  the  chapter."  And  Christina 
said,  "  Then  so  will  I." 

Among  Mrs.  Rossetti's  accomplishments  was 
reading  aloud,  mainly  from  imaginative  writers, 
and  I  cannot  recall  without  a  thrill  of  mingled 
emotions  a  delightful  stay  of  mine  at  Kelmscott 
in  the  summer  of  '73,  when  she,  whose  age  then 
was  seventy-three,  used  to  read  out  to  us  all 
sorts  of  things.  And  writing  these  words  makes 
me  hear  those  readings  again — makes  me  hear, 
through  the  open  casement  of  the  quaint  old 
house,  the  blackbirds  from  the  home  field 
trying  in  vain  to  rival  the  music  of  that  half- 
Italian,  half-English  voice.  To  have  been  ad- 
mitted into  such  a  charmed  circle  I  look  upon 
as  one  of  the  greatest  privileges  of  my  life. 
It  is  something  for  a  man  to  have  lived  within 
touch  of  Christina  Rossetti  and  her  mother. 


i86  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

From  her  father,  however,  Christina  took, 
either  by  the  operation  of  some  law  of  heredity 
or  from  early  association  with  the  author  of 
'  II  Mistero  dell'  Amor  Platonico  del  Medio  Evo  ' 
and  '  La  Beatrice  di  Dante/  that  passion  for 
symbolism  which  is  one  of  the  chief  features  of 
her  poetry.  There  is,  perhaps,  no  more  striking 
instance  of  the  inscrutable  lines  in  which 
ancestral  characteristics  descend  than  the  way 
in  which  the  passion  for  symbolism  was  in- 
herited by  Christina  and  Gabriel  Rossetti  from 
their  father. 

While  Christina's  poetical  work  may  be 
described  as  being  all  symbolical,  she  was  not 
much  given,  like  her  brother,  to  read  symbols 
into  the  every-day  incidents  fo  life.  Gabriel, 
on  the  contrary,  though  using  symbolism  in  his 
poetry  in  only  a  moderate  degree,  allowed  his 
instinct  for  symbolizing  his  own  life  to  pass 
into  positive  superstition.  When  a  party  of 
us — including  Mrs.  Rossetti,  Christina,  the  two 
aunts,  Dr.  Hake;  with  four  of  his  sons,  and 
myself — were  staying  for  Christmas  with  Ga- 
briel near  Bognor,  a  tree  fell  in  the  garden 
during  a  storm.  While  Gabriel  seeemd  inclined 
to  take  it  as  a  sign  of  future  disaster,  Christina, 
whose  poetry  is  so  full  of  symbolism,  would 
smile  at  such  a  notion.  Yet  Gabriel  could 
speak  of  his  father's  symbolizing  (as  in  '  La 
Beatrice  di  Dante ')  as  being  absolutely  and 
hopelessly  eccentric  and  worthless.  This  is 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI    187 

remarkable,  for  one  would  have  thought  that 
it  was  impossible  to  read  those  extraordinary 
works  of  the  elder  Rossetti's  without  being  im- 
pressed by  the  rare  intellectual  subtlety  of  the 
Italian  scholar. 

Of  course  the  opportunities  of  brother  and 
sister  of  studying  Nature  were  identical.  Both 
were  born  in  London,  and  during  childhood 
saw  Nature  only  as  a  holiday  scene.  Christina 
would  talk  with  delight  of  her  grandfather's 
cottage  retreat  about  thirty  miles  from  London, 
to  which  she  used  to  go  for  a  holiday  in 
a  stage  coach,  and  of  the  beauty  of  the 
country  around.  But  these  expeditions  were 
not  numerous,  and  came  to  an  end  when 
she  was  a  child  of  seven  or  eight,  and  it  was 
very  little  that  she  saw  outside  London  before 
girlhood  was  past.  I  have  myself  heard  her 
speak  of  what  she  has  somewhere  written  about 
— the  rapture  of  the  sight  of  some  primroses 
growing  in  a  railway  cutting.  It  is,  of  course, 
a  great  disadvantage  to  any  poet  not  to  have 
been  born  in  the  country ;  learned  in  Nature 
the  city-born  poet  can  never  be,  as  we  see  in 
the  case  of  Milton,  who  loved  Nature  without 
knowing  her.  It  is  here  that  Jean  Ingelow  has 
such  an  advantage  over  Christina  Rossetti. 
Her  love  of  flowers,  and  birds,  and  trees,  and 
all  that  makes  the  earth  so  beautiful,  is  not 
one  whit  stronger  than  Christina's  own,  but  it  is 
a  love  born  of  an  exhaustive  detailed  knowledge 
of  Nature's  life. 


188  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

On  a  certain  occasion  when  walking  with  a 
friend  at  Hunter's  Forestall,  near  Herne  Bay, 
where  she  and  her  mother  were  nursing  Gabriel 
through  one  of  his  illnesses,  the  talk  ran  upon 
Shelley's  '  Skylark,'  a  poem  which  she  adored. 
She  was  literally  bewildered  because  the  friend 
showed  that  he  was  able  to  tell,  from  a  certain 
change  of  sound  in  the  note  of  a  skylark  that 
had  risen  over  the  lane,  the  moment  when  the 
bird  had  made  up  its  mind  to  cease  singing  and 
return  to  the  earth.  It  seemed  to  her  an  almost 
supernatural  gift,  and  yet  an  ignorant  plough- 
man will  often  be  able  to  do  the  same  thing. 
This  kind  of  intimacy  with  Nature  she  coveted. 
With  the  lower  animals,  nevertheless,  she  had 
a  strange  kind  of  sympathy  of  her  own.  Young 
creatures  especially  understood  the  playful 
humour  of  her  approach.  A  delightful  fan- 
tastic whim  was  the  bond  between  her  and 
puppies  and  kittens  and  birds.  Her  intimacy 
with  Nature — of  a  different  kind  altogether 
from  that  of  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson — was 
of  the  kind  that  I  have  described  on  a 
previous  occasion  as  Sufeyistic  :  she  loved 
the  beauty  of  this  world,  but  not  entirely 
for  itself;  she  loved  it  on  account  of  its 
symbols  of  another  world  beyond.  And 
yet  she  was  no  slave  to  the  ascetic  side  of 
Christianity.  No  doubt  there  was  mixed  with 
her  spiritualism,  or  perhaps  underlying  it,  a 
rich  sensuonsness  that  under  other  circum- 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI    189 

stances  of  life  would  have  made  itself  manifest, 
and  also  a  rare  potentiality  of  deep  passion. 
It  is  this,  indeed,  which  makes  the  study  of  her 
great  and  noble  nature  so  absorbing. 

Perhaps  for  strength  both  of  subject  and  of 
treatment,  Christina  Rossetti's  master-piece  is 
'  Amor  Mundi.'  Here  we  get  a  lesson  of  human 
life  expressed,  not  didactically,  but  in  a  concrete 
form  of  unsurpassable  strength,  harmony,  and 
concision.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  of  her  work 
generally  that  her  strength  as  an  artist  is  seen 
not  so  much  in  mastery  over  the  rhythm,  or 
even  over  the  verbal  texture  of  poetry,  as  in  the 
skill  with  which  she  expresses  an  allegorical 
intent  by  subtle  suggestion  instead  of  direct 
preachment.  Herein  '  An  Apple  Gathering  '  is 
quite  perfect.  It  is,  however,  if  I  may  venture 
to  say  so,  a  mistake  to  speak  of  Christina 
Rossetti  as  being  a  great  poetic  artist.  Exqui- 
site as  her  best  things  are,  no  one  had  a  more 
uncertain  hand  than  she  when  at  work.  Here, 
as  in  so  many  things,  she  was  like  Blake,  whose 
influence  upon  her  was  very  great. 

Of  self-criticism  she  had  almost  nothing. 
On  one  occasion,  many  years  ago  now,  she 
expressed  a  wish  to  have  some  of  her  verses 
printed  in  The  Athenceum,  and  I  suggested  her 
sending  them  to  16,  Cheyne  Walk,  her  brother's 
house,  where  I  then  used  to  spend  much  time 
in  a  study  that  I  occupied  there.  I  said  that 
her  brother  and  I  would  read  them  together  and 


igo  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

submit  them  to  the  editor.  She  sent  several 
poems  (I  think  about  six),  not  one  of  which  was 
in  the  least  degree  worthy  of  her.  This  natur- 
ally embarrassed  me,  but  Gabriel,  who  entirely 
shared  my  opinion  of  the  poems,  wrote  at  once 
to  her  and  told  her  that  the  verses  sent  were, 
both  in  his  own  judgment  and  mine,  unworthy 
of  her,  and  that  she  "  had  better  buckle  to  at 
once  and  write  another  poem."  She  did  so, 
and  the  result  was  an  exquisite  lyric  which 
appeared  in  The  AfhencBum.  Here  is  where 
she  was  wonderfully  unlike  Gabriel,  whose  power 
of  self-criticism  in  poetry  was  almost  as  great 
as  Tennyson's  own.  But  in  the  matter  of 
inspiration  she  was,  I  must  think,  above  Gabriel 
— above  almost  everybody. 

If  English  rhymed  metres  had  been  as 
easy  to  work  in  as  Italian  rhymed  metres, 
her  imagination  was  so  vivid,  her  poetic 
impulse  was  so  strong,  and,  indeed,  her 
poetic  wealth  so  inexhaustible,  that  she  would 
have  stood  in  the  front  rank  of  English 
poets.  But  the  writer  of  English  rhymed 
measures  is  in  a  very  different  position  as 
regards  improvisatorial  efforts  from  the  Italian 
who  writes  in  rhymed  measures.  He  has  to 
grapple  with  the  metrical  structure — to  seize 
the  form  by  the  throat,  as  it  were,  and  force  it 
to  take  in  the  enormous  wealth  at  the  English 
poet's  command.  Fine  as  is  the  '  Prince's 
Progress/  for  instance  (and  it  would  be  hard  to 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI    191 

find  its  superior  in  regard  to  poetic  material  in 
the  whole  compass  of  Victorian  poetry),  the 
number  of  rugged  lines  the  reader  has  to  en- 
counter weighs  upon  and  distresses  him  until, 
indeed,  the  conclusion  is  reached :  then  the 
passion  and  the  pathos  of  the  subject  cause  the 
poem  to  rise  upon  billows  of  true  rhythm. 
On  the  other  hand,  however,  it  may  be  said 
that  a  special  quality  of  her  verse  is  a  curiosa 
felicitas  which  makes  a  metrical  blemish  tell 
as  a  kind  of  suggestive  grace.  But  I  must  stop  ; 
I  must  bear  in  mind  that  he  who  has  walked  and 
talked  with  Christina  Rossetti,  burdened  with 
a  wealth  of  remembered  beauty  from  earth  and 
heaven,  runs  the  risk  of  becoming  garrulous. 


II. 

IN  regard  to  unpublished  manuscripts  which 
a  writer  has  left  behind  him,  the  responsi- 
bilities of  his  legal  representatives  are  far 
more  grave  than  seems  to  be  generally  supposed. 
In  deciding  what  posthumous  writings  an 
executor  is  justified  in  giving  to  the  public  it  is 
important,  of  course,  to  take  into  account  the 
character,  the  idiosyncrasy  of  the  writer  in  regard 
to  all  his  relations  towards  what  may  be  called 
the  mechanism  of  every-day  life.  Some  poets 
are  so  methodical  that  the  mere  fact  of  anything 
having  been  left  by  them  in  manuscript  un- 
accompanied by  directions  as  to  its  disposal  is 
prim  a  facie  evidence  that  it  was  intended  to 
be  withheld  from  the  public,  either  temporarily 
for  revision  or  finally  and  absolutely.  And,  of 
course,  the  representative,  especially  if  he  is 
also  a  relative  or  a  friend,  has  to  consider 
primarily  the  intentions  of  the  dead.  If  loyalty 
to  living  friends  is  a  duty,  what  shall  be  said 
of  loyalty  to  friends  who  are  dead  ?  This,  in- 
deed, has  a  sanction  of  the  deepest  religious 
kind. 

No  doubt,  in  the  philosophical  sense,  the 
aspiration  of  the  dead  artist  for  perfect  work 
and  the  honour  it  brings  is  a  delusion,  a  sweet 

192 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI     193 

mockery  of  the  fancy.  But  then  so  is  every 
other  aspiration  which  soars  above  the  warm 
circle  of  the  human  affections,  and  if  this 
delusion  of  the  dead  artist  was  held  worthy  of 
respect  during  the  artist's  life,  it  is  worthy  of 
respect — nay,  it  is  worthy  of  reverence — after 
he  is  dead.  Now  every  true  artist  when  at 
work  has  before  him  an  ideal  which  he  would 
fain  reach,  or  at  least  approach,  and  if  he  does 
not  himself  know  whether  in  an}'  given  exercise 
he  has  reached  that  ideal  or  neared  it,  we  may 
be  pretty  sure  that  no  one  else  does.  Hence, 
whenever  there  is  apparent  in  the  circumstances 
under  which  the  MS.  has  been  found  the  slightest 
indication  that  the  writer  did  not  wish  it  to 
be  given  to  the  public,  the  representative  who 
ignores  this  indication  sins  against  that  rever- 
ence for  the  dead  which  in  all  forms  of  civiliza- 
tion declares  itself  to  be  one  of  the  deepest 
instincts  of  man. 

That  the  instinct  we  are  speaking  of  is  really 
one  of  the  primal  instincts  is  the  very  first 
fact  that  archaeology  vouches  for.  Of  many 
lost  races,  such  as  the  Aztecs  and  Toltecs,  for 
instance,  we  have  no  historical  traces  save 
those  which  are  furnished  by  testimonials  of 
their  reverence  for  the  dead.  But  that  this  fine 
instinct  is  now  dying  out  in  the  Western  world — 
that  it  will  soon  be  eliminated  from  the  human 
constitution  of  races  that  are  generally  con- 
sidered to  be  the  most  advanced — is  made 

o 


194  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

manifest  by  the  present  attitude  of  England 
and  America  towards  their  illustrious  dead. 
In  the  literary  arena  of  both  countries,  indeed, 
so  entire  is  the  abrogation  of  this  most  beautiful 
of  all  feelings — so  recklessly  and  so  shamefully 
are  not  only  raw  manuscripts,  but  private 
letters,  put  up  to  auction  for  publication — that 
at  last  the  great  writers  of  our  time,  confronted 
by  this  new  terror,  are  wisely  beginning  to  take 
care  of  themselves  and  their  friends  by  a  holo- 
caust of  every  scrap  of  paper  lying  in  their 
desks. 

So  demoralized  has  the  literary  world  become 
by  the  present  craze  for  notoriety  and  for 
personal  details  of  prominent  men  that  an 
executor  who  in  regard  to  the  disposal  of  his 
testator's  money  would  act  with  the  most  rigid 
scrupulousness  will,  in  regard  to  the  MSS.  he 
finds  in  his  testator's  desk,  commit,  "  for  the 
benefit  of  the  public,"  an  outrage  that  would 
have  made  the  men  of  a  less  vulgar  period 
shudder.  The  "  benefit  of  the  public,"  indeed  ! 
Who  is  this  "  public,"  and  what  are  its  rights  as 
against  the  rights  of  the  dead  poet,  whose  heart- 
strings are  woven  into  "  copy  "  by  the  dis- 
loyal friend  he  trusted  ?  The  inherent  callous- 
ness of  man's  nature  is  never  so  painfully  seen 
as  in  the  relation  of  this  ogre,  "  the  public," 
to  dead  genius.  Without  the  smallest  real 
reverence  for  genius — without  the  smallest 
capacity  of  distinguishing  the  poetaster  it 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI     195 

always  adores  from  the  true  poet  it  always 
ignores — the  public  can  still  fall  down  before 
the  pedestal  upon  which  genius  has  been  placed 
by  the  select  few — fall  down  with  its  long  ears 
wide  open  for  gossip  about  genius,  or  anything 
else  that  is  talked  about. 

It  was  with  such  thoughts  as  these  that  we 
opened  the  present  somewhat  bulky  volume* — 
not,  however,  with  many  misgivings ;  for 
Christina  Rossetti,  before  she  made  her  brother 
executor,  knew  what  were  his  views  as  to  the 
rights  of  the  public  as  against  the  rights  of 
genius.  And  if  he  has  printed  here  every 
poem  he  could  lay  hands  upon,  he  may  fairly 
be  assumed  to  have  done  so  with  the  consent  of 
a  sister  whom  he  loved  so  dearly  and  by  whom 
he  was  so  dearly  loved.  Fortunately  there  are 
not  many  of  these  relics  that  are  devoid  of  a 
deep  interest,  some  from  the  biographical  point 
of  view,  some  from  the  poetical. 

Again,  what  is  to  be  said  about  such  part  of 
a  dead  author's  writing  as,  having  appeared  in 
print,  has  afterwards  passed  through  the  author's 
crucible  of  artistic  revision  ?  What  about  the 
executor's  duty  here,  where  the  case  between 
the  author  and  the  public  stands  on  a  different 
footing  ?  At  the  present  time,  when  news- 
papers and  novels  alone  are  read,  it  is  not  the 
poet's  verses  which  most  people  read,  but 

*  'New  Poems.'  By  Christina  Rossetti.  Edited  by 
"William  Michael  Rossetti.  (Macmillan  &  Co.) 


ig6  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

paragraphs  about  what  the  author  and  his 
wife  and  children  "  eat  and  drink  and  avoid  "  :  a 
time  when,  if  the  poet's  verses  are  read  at  all, 
it  is  the  accidents  rather  than  the  essentials 
of  the  work  that  seem  primarily  to  concern  the 
public.  At  such  a  time  an  editor  is  not  entirely 
master  of  his  actions.  Doubtless,  there  is 
much  reason  in  the  wrath  of  Tennyson  and  other 
great  poets  against  the  "  literary  resurrection 
man,"  who,  though  incapable  of  understanding 
the  beauties  of  a  beautiful  work,  can  take  a 
very  great  interest  in  poring  over  the  various 
stages  through  which  that  work  has  passed  on 
its  way  to  perfection.  These  poets,  however, 
are  apt  to  forget  that,  after  a  poem  or  line 
has  once  passed  into  print,  its  final  suppression 
is  impossible.  And  perhaps  there  are  other 
reasons  why,  in  this  matter,  an  editor  should  be 
allowed  some  indulgence. 

Here,  for  instance,  is  a  puzzling  case  to  be 
tried  in  foro  conscienticz.  In  the  first  edition  of 
'  Goblin  Market/  published  in  1862,  appeared 
three  poems  of  more  breadth  of  treatment  than 
any  of  the  others :  '  Cousin  Kate/  a  ballad, 
'  Sister  Maude/  a  ballad,  and  '  A  Triad/  a 
sonnet.  In  subsequent  issues  of  the  book  these 
were  all  omitted.  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti,  speaking 
of  '  Sister  Maude/  says :  "I  presume  that  my 
sister,  with  overstrained  scrupulosity,  con- 
sidered its  moral  tone  to  be  somewhat  open  to 
exception.  In  such  a  view  I  by  no  means 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI     197 

agree,  and  I  therefore  reproduce  it."  If  Chris- 
tina's objection  was  valid  when  she  raised  it, 
it  is,  of  course,  valid  now,  when  the  beloved 
poet  is  in  the  "  country  beyond  Orion,"  and 
knows  what  sanctions  are  of  man's  imagining, 
and  what  sanctions  are  more  eternal  than  the 
movements  of  the  stars. 

The  question  here  is,  What  were  Christina 
Rossetti's  wishes  ?  not  whether  her  brother 
"  agrees  "  with  them.  Hence,  if  it  were  not 
certain  that  some  one  would  soon  have  restored 
them,  would  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  have  hesitated 
before  doing  so  ?  For  they  are  among  the  most 
powerful  things  Christina  Rossetti  ever  wrote, 
and  it  was  a  subject  of  deep  regret  to  her 
friends  that  she  suppressed  them.  Yet  she 
withdrew  them  from  conscientious  motives. 
In  '  Sister  Maude  '  she  showed  how  great  was 
her  power  in  the  most  difficult  of  all  forms  of 
poetic  art — the  romantic  ballad.  Splendid  as 
are  Gabriel  Rossetti's  '  Sister  Helen  '  and  '  Rose 
Mary,'  the  literary  aura  surrounding  them  pre- 
vents them  from  seeming — as  the  best  of  the 
Border  ballads  seem — Nature's  very  voice 
muttering  in  her  dreams  of  the  pathos  and 
the  mystery  of  the  human  story.  It  was  not, 
perhaps,  given  even  to  Rossetti  to  get  very 
near  to  that  supreme  old  poet  (not  forgotten, 
because  never  known)  who  wrote  "  May  Mar- 
garet's "  appeal  to  the  ghost  of  her  lover  Clerk 
Saunders : — 


198  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

Is  there  ony  room  at  your  head.  Saunders  ? 

Is  there  ony  room  at  your  feet  ? 
Is  there  ony  room  at  your  side,  Saunders, 

Whe  re  fain,  fain  I  wad  sleep  ? 

where  the  very  imperfections  of  the  rhymes 
seem  somehow  to  add  to  the  pathos  and  the 
mystery  of  the  chant.  But  if.  indeed,  it  has 
been  given  to  any  modern  poet  to  get  into  this 
atmosphere,  it  has  been  given  to  Christina 
Rossetti.  And  so  with  the  ballad  of  simple 
human  passion  no  modern  writer  has  quite 
done  what  Christina  Rossetti  has  done  in  one 
of  the  poems  here  restored  : — 

SISTER  MAUDE. 

Who  told  my  mother  of  my  shame, 

Who  told  my  father  of  my  dear  ? 
Oh  who  but  Maude,  my  sister  Maude, 

Who  lurked  to  spy  and  peer. 

Cold  he  lies,  as  cold  as  stone, 

With  his  clotted  curls  about  his  face : 

The  comeliest  corpse  in  all  the  world, 
And  worthy  of  a  queen's  embrace. 

You  might  have  spared  his  soul,  sister, 
Have  spared  my  soul,  your  own  soul  too : 

Though  I  had  not  been  born  at  all, 
He  'd  never  have  looked  at  you. 

My  father  may  sleep  in  Paradise, 

My  mother  at  Heaven-gate  : 
But  sister  Maude  shall  get  no  sleep 

Either  early  or  late. 

My  father  may  wear  a  golden  gown, 

My  mother  a  crown  may  win ; 
If  my  dear  and  I  knocked  at  Heaven-gate 

Perhaps  they  'd  let  us  in  : 
But  sister  Maude,  O  sister  Maude, 
tf  with  death  and  sin. 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI     199 

But  it  is  for  the  personal  poems  that  this  volume 
will  be  prized  most  dearly  by  certain  readers. 

Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  speaks  of  "  the  very  wide 
and  exceedingly  strong  outburst  of  eulogy  "  of 
his  sister  which  appeared  in  the  public  press 
after  her  death.  Yet  that  outburst  was  far 
from  giving  adequate  expression  to  what  was 
felt  by  some  of  her  readers — those  between 
whom  and  herself  there  was  a  bond  of  sym- 
pathy so  sacred  and  so  deep  as  to  be  something 
like  a  religion.  It  is  not  merely  that  she  was 
the  acknowledged  queen  in  that  world  (outside 
the  arena  called  "  the  literary  world  ")  where 
poetry  is  "  its  own  exceeding  great  reward," 
but  to  other  readers  of  a  different  kind  altogether 
— readers  who,  drawing  the  deepest  delight 
from  such  poetry  as  specially  appeals  to  them, 
never  read  any  other,  and  have  but  small 
knowledge  of  poetry  as  a  fine  art — her  verse 
was,  perhaps,  more  precious  still.  They  feel 
that  at  every  page  of  her  writing  the  beautiful 
poetry  is  only  the  outcome  of  a  life  whose 
almost  unexampled  beauty  fascinates  them. 

Although  Christina  Rossetti  had  more  of 
what  is  called  the  unconsciousness  of  poetic 
inspiration  than  any  other  poet  of  her  time, 
the  writing  of  poetry  was  not  by  any  means 
the  chief  business  of  her  life.  She  was  too 
thorough  a  poet  for  that.  No  one  felt  so  deeply 
as  she  that  poetic  art  is  only  at  the  best  the 
imperfect  body  in  which  dwells  the  poetic  soul. 


200  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

No  one  felt  so  deeply  as  she  that  as  the  notes 
of  the  nightingale  are  but  the  involuntary 
expression  of  the  bird's  emotion,  and,  again, 
as  the  perfume  of  the  violet  is  but  the  flower's 
natural  breath,  so  it  is  and  must  be  with  the 
song  of  the  very  poet,  and  that,  therefore,  to 
write  beautifully  is  in  a  deep  and  true  sense  to 
live  beautifully.  In  the  volume  before  us,  as 
in  all  her  previously  published  writings,  we 
see  at  its  best  what  Christianity  is  as  the  motive 
power  of  poetry.  The  Christian  idea  is  essen- 
tially feminine,  and  of  this  feminine  quality 
Christina  Rossetti's  poetry  is  full. 

In  motive  power  the  difference  between 
classic  and  Christian  poetry  must  needs  be 
very  great.  But  whatever  may  be  said  in 
favour  of  one  as  against  the  other,  this  at  least 
cannot  be  controverted,  that  the  history  of 
literature  shows  no  human  development  so 
beautiful  as  the  ideal  Christian  woman  of  our 
own  day.  She  is  unique,  indeed.  Men  of 
science  tell  us  that  among  all  the  fossilized 
plants  we  find  none  of  the  lovely  family  of  the 
rose,  and  in  the  same  way  we  should  search  in 
vain  through  the  entire  human  record  for  any- 
thing so  beautiful  as  that  kind  of  Christian 
lady  to  whom  self-abnegation  is  not  only  the 
first  of  duties,  but  the  first  of  joys.  Yet,  no 
doubt,  the  Christian  idea  must  needs  be  more 
or  less  flavoured  by  each  personality  through 
which  it  is  expressed.  With  regard  to  Christina 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI     201 

Rossetti,  while  upon  herself  Christian  dogma 
imposed  infinite  obligations — obligations  which 
could  never  be  evaded  by  her  without  the  risk 
of  all  the  penalties  fulminated  by  all  believers — 
there  was  in  the  order  of  things  a  sort  of  ether  of 
universal  charity  for  all  others.  She  would 
lament,  of  course,  the  lapses  of  every  soul,  but 
for  these  there  was  a  forgiveness  which  her  own 
lapses  could  never  claim.  There  was,  to  be 
sure,  a  sweet  egotism  in  this.  It  was  very 
fascinating,  however.  This  feeling  explains 
what  seems  somewhat  to  puzzle  the  editor, 
especially  in  the  poem  called  '  The  End  of  the 
First  Part/  written  April  i8th,  1849,  °f  which 
he  says,  "  '  Tears  for  guilt '  is  in  reference  to 
Christina  a  very  exaggerated  phrase  "  : — 

THE   END   OF  THE   FIRST  PART. 

My  happy  dream  is  finished  with, 

My  dream  in  which  alone  I  lived  so  long. 

My  heart  slept — woe  is  me,  it  wakeneth  ; 
Was  weak — I  thought  it  strong. 

Oh,  weary  wakening  from  a  life-true  dream ! 

Oh  pleasant  dream  from  which  I  wake  in  pain  ! 
I  rested  all  my  trust  on  things  that  seem, 

And  all  my  trust  is  vain. 

I  must  pull  down  my  palace  that  I  built, 
Dig  up  the  pleasure-gardens  of  my  soul ; 

Must  change  my  laughter  to  sad  tears  for  guilt, 
My  freedom  to  control. 

Now  all  the  cherished  secrets  of  my  heart, 
Now  all  my  hidden  hopes,  are  turned  to  sin. 

Part  of  my  life  is  dead,  part  sick,  and  part 
Is  all  on  fire  within. 


202  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

The  fruitless  thought  of  what  I  might  have  been, 
Haunting  me  ever,  will  not  let  me  rest. 

A  cold  North  wind  has  withered  all  my  green, 
My  sun  is  in  the  West. 

But,  where  my  palace  stood,  with  the  same  stone 

I  will  uprear  a  shady  hermitage ; 
And  there  my  spirit  shall  keep  house  alone, 

Accomplishing  its  age. 

There  other  garden  beds  shall  He  around, 

Full  of  sweet-briar  and  incense-bearing  thyme  : 

There  I  will  sit,  and  listen  for  the  sound 
Of  the  last  lingering  chime. 

It  was  the  beauty  of  her  life  that  made  her 
personal  influence  so  great,  and  upon  no  one 
was  that  influence  exercised  with  more  strength 
than  upon  her  illustrious  brother  Gabriel,  who 
in  many  ways  was  so  much  unlike  her.  In 
spite  of  his  deep  religious  instinct  and  his 
intense  sympathy  with  mysticism,  Gabriel  re- 
mained what  is  called  a  free  thinker  in  the  true 
meaning  of  that  much-abused  phrase.  In  reli- 
gion as  in  politics  he  thought  for  himself,  and 
yet  when  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  affirms  that  the 
poet  was  never  drawn  towards  free  thinking 
women,  he  says  what  is  perfectly  true.  And  this 
arose  from  the  extraordinary  influence,  scarcely 
recognized  by  himself,  that  the  beauty  of 
Christina's  life  and  her  religious  system  had 
upon  him. 

This,  of  course,  is  not  the  place  in  which  to 
say  much  about  him  ;  nor  need  much  at  any 
time  and  in  any  place  be  said,  for  has  he  not 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI    203 

written  his  own  biography — depicted  himself 
more  faithfully  than  Lockhart  could  depict 
Walter  Scott,  more  faithfully  than  Boswell 
could  depict  Dr.  Johnson  ?  Has  he  not  done 
this  in  the  immortal  sonnet-sequence  called 
'  The  House  of  Life  '  ?  What  poet  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  do  we  know  so  intimately  as  we 
know  the  author  of  '  The  House  of  Life  '  ? 

Christina  Rossetti's  peculiar  form  of  the 
Christian  sentiment  she  inherited  from  her 
mother,  the  sweetness  of  whose  nature  was 
never  disturbed  by  that  exercise  of  the  egoism 
of  the  artist  in  which  Christina  indulged  and 
without  whose  influence  it  is  difficult  to  imagine 
what  the  Rossetti  family  would  have  been. 
The  father  was  a  poet  and  a  mystic  of  the 
cryptographic  kind,  and  it  is  by  no  means 
unlikely  that  had  he  studied  Shakespeare  as  he 
studied  Dante  he  would  in  these  days  have 
been  a  disciple  of  the  Baconians,  and,  of  course, 
his  influence  on  the  family  in  the  matter  of 
literary  activity  and  of  mysticism  must  have 
been  very  great.  And  yet  all  that  is  noblest 
in  Christina's  poetry,  an  ever-present  sense  of 
the  beauty  and  power  of  goodness,  must  surely 
have  come  from  the  mother,  from  whom  also 
came  that  other  charm  of  Christina's,  to  which 
Gabriel  was  peculiarly  sensitive,  her  youthful- 
ness  of  temperament . 

Among  the  many  differences  which  exist 
between  the  sexes  this  might,  perhaps,  be 


204  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

mentioned,  that  while  it  is  beautiful  for  a  man 
to  grow  old — grow  old  with  the  passage  of  years 
— a  woman  to  retain  her  charm  must  always 
remain  young.  In  a  deep  sense  woman  may 
be  said  to  have  but  one  paramount  charm, 
youth,  and  when  this  is  gone  all  is  gone.  The 
youthfulness  of  the  body,  of  course,  soon 
vanishes,  but  with  any  woman  who  can  really 
win  and  retain  the  love  of  man  this  is  not  nearly 
so  important  as  at  first  it  seems.  It  is  the 
youthfulness  of  the  soul  that,  in  the  truly 
adorable  woman,  is  invulnerable.  It  is  one  of 
the  deep  misfortunes  of  the  very  poor  of  cities 
that  as  a  rule  the  terrible  struggle  with  the 
wolf  at  the  door  is  apt  to  sour  the  nature  of 
women  and  turn  them  into  crones  at  the  age 
when  in  the  more  fortunate  classes  the  true 
beauty  of  woman  often  begins  ;  and  even  where 
the  environment  is  not  that  of  poverty,  but  of 
straitened  means,  it  is  as  a  rule  impossible  for 
a  woman  to  retain  this  youthfulness. 

In  the  case  of  the  Rossettis,  in  the  early  period 
they  were  in  a  position  of  straitened  means. 
Nor  was  this  all :  the  children,  Gabriel  alone 
excepted,  felt  themselves  to  be  by  nationality 
aliens.  Christina,  though  she  made  only  one 
visit  to  Italy,  felt  herself  to  be  an  Italian,  and 
would  smile  when  any  one  talked  to  her  of  the 
John  Bullism  of  her  brother  Gabriel,  and  yet, 
with  these  powerful  causes  working  against 
their  natural  elasticity  of  temperament,  both 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI     225 

mother  and  daughter  retained  that  juvenility 
which  Gabriel  Rossetti  felt  to  be  so  refreshing. 
So  strong  was  it  in  the  mother  that  it  had 
a  strange  effect  upon  the  mere  physique,  and 
at  eighty  the  expression  in  the  eyes,  and, 
indeed,  on  the  face  throughout,  retained  so 
much  of  the  winsomeness  of  youth  that  she 
was  more  beautiful  than  most  young  women  : — 

1882. 

My  blessed  mother  dozing  in  her  chair 

On  Christmas  Day  seemed  an  embodied  Love, 
A  comfortable  Love  with  soft  brown  hair 

Softened  and  silvered  to  a  tint  of  dove  ; 
A  better  sort  of  Venus  with  an  air 

Angelical  from  thoughts  that  dwell  above  ; 
A  wiser  Pallas  in  whose  body  fair 

Enshrined  a  blessed  soul  looks  out  thereof. 
Winter  brought  holly  then,  now  Spring  has  brought 

Paler  and  frailer  snowdrops  shivering ; 
And  I  have  brought  a  simple  humble  thought — 

I  her  devoted  duteous  Valentine — 
A  lifelong  thought  which  thrills  this  song  I  sing, 

A  lifelong  love  to  this  dear  saint  of  mine. 

Although  this  was  not  so  with  Christina, 
upon  whose  face  ill-health  worked  its  ravages, 
her  temperament,  as  we  say,  remained  as  young 
as  ever.  The  lovely  relations — sometimes  staid 
and  sometimes  playful — between  mother  and 
daughter,  are  seen  throughout  the  book  before 
us.  But  especially  are  they  seen  in  one  little 
group  of  poems — "  The  Valentines  to  her 
Mother " — in  regard  to  which  Christina  left 
the  following  pencilled  note  : — 

"  These  Valentines  had  their  origin  from  my 


206  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

dearest  mother's  remarking  that  she  had  never 
received  one.  I,  her  C.  G.  R.,  ever  after  sup- 
plied one  on  the  day  ;  and  (so  far  as  I  recollect) 
it  was  a  surprise  every  time,  she  having  for- 
gotten all  about  it  in  the  interim." 

Mrs.  Rossetti's  first  valentine  was  received 
when  she  was  nearly  seventy-six  years  of 
age,  and  she  continued  every  year  to  receive 
a  valentine  until  1886,  when  she  died.  Surely 
there  is  not  in  the  history  of  English  poetry 
anything  more  fascinating  than  these  valentines. 

It  is  pleasing  to  see  the  book  open  with  the 
following  dedication  by  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti : — 

"  To  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne,  a  generous 
eulogist  of  Christina  Rossetti,  who  hailed  his 
genius  and  prized  himself  the  greatest  of  living 
British  poets,  my  old  and  constant  friend,  I 
dedicate  this  book." 


V. 
DR.   GORDON   HAKE. 

1809-1895. 

I  LITTLE  thought  when  I  recently  quoted 
from  Dr.  Hake's  account  of  that  Christmas 
gathering  of  the  Rossettis  at  Bognor  in 
1875 — a  gathering  which  he  has  made  historic — 
that  to-day  I  should  be  writing  an  obituary 
notice  of  the  "  parable-poet "  himself.  It  is 
true  that,  having  fractured  a  leg  in  a  lamentable 
accident  which  befell  him,  he  had  for  the  last 
few  years  been  imprisoned  in  one  room  and 
compelled  during  most  of  the  time  to  lie  in  a 
horizontal  position.  But  notwithstanding  this, 
and  notwithstanding  his  great  age,  his  mental 
faculties  remained  so  unimpaired  that  it  was 
hard  to  believe  his  death  could  be  so  near. 

Although,  owing  to  his  intimacy  with  George 
Borrow,  Hake  was  associated  in  the  public 
mind  with  the  Eastern  Counties,  he  was  not 
an  East  Anglian.  It  was  at  Leeds  (in  1809) 
that  he  first  saw  the  light.  His  mother  was 
a  Gordon  of  the  Huntly  stock,  and  came  of 
"  the  Park  branch  "  of  that  house.  The  famous 
General  Gordon  was  his  first  cousin,  and  it  was 
owing  to  this  fact  that  Hake's  son,  Mr.JEgmont 

207 


208  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

Hake,  was  entrusted  with  the  material  for 
writing  his  authoritative  books  upon  the  heroic 
Christian  soldier.  Between  Hake's  eldest  son, 
Mr.  T.  St.  E.  Hake,  a  rising  novelist,  and  the 
General  the  likeness  was  curiously  strong. 
Nominated  by  one  of  his  uncles  to  Christ's 
Hospital,  Hake  entered  that  famous  school. 
He  gives  in  his  '  Memoirs  of  Eighty  Years  '  a 
very  vivid  picture  of  it  and  also  a  really  vital 
portrait  of  himself.  From  his  very  childhood 
he  was  haunted  by  a  literary  ambition  which 
can  only  be  called  an  insatiable  passion.  It 
lasted  till  the  very  hour  of  his  death.  When 
eleven  years  of  age  he  became  acquainted  with 
that  one  poet  whose  immensity  of  fame  has  for 
more  than  three  centuries  been  the  flame  into 
which  the  myriad  Shakespeare  moths  of  English 
literature  have  been  flying.  The  Shakespearean 
of  eleven  summers  did  not,  like  so  many  Shake- 
speare enthusiasts  from  Davenant  down  to 
those  latest  Shakespeares,  Homers,  and  Miltons 
of  our  contemporary  paragraphists,  get  himself 
up  to  look  like  the  Stratford  bust.  The  only 
man  who  ever  really  looked  like  that  bust  was 
the  late  Dion  Boucicault,  who  did  so  without 
trying.  But  Shakespeare's  wonderful  work 
acted  on  the  imagination  of  the  child  of  eleven 
in  an  equally  humorous  way.  "  Shakespeare's 
perfection,"  he  says  in  his  memoirs,  "  not  only 
made  me  envious  of  the  greatest  of  writers,  but 
it  depressed  me  in  turn  with  the  feeling  that 


DR.    GORDON    HAKK 

/•'n»/t  a  crayon-drawing  by  D.  G.  Rossetti  reproduced  by  t/ie  kind permissioi, 
Mr.  Thomas  Hake 


DR.    GORDON    HAKE  209 

I  could  never  equal  it  howsoever  long  I  might 
live." 

Yet  although  this  passion  never  passed  away, 
but  waxed  with  his  years,  it  must  not  be  sup- 
posed that  Hake  suffered  from  what  in  the 
"  new  criticism  "  is  sweetly  and  appropriately 
called  "  modernity " — in  other  words,  that 
vulgar  greed  for  notoriety  that  in  these  days, 
when  literature  to  be  listened  to  must  be  puffed 
like  quack  medicine  and  patent  soap,  has  made 
the  atmosphere  of  the  literary  arena  somewhat 
stifling  in  the  nostrils  of  those  who  turn  from 
"  modernity  "  to  poetic  art.  Nor  was  Hake's 
feeling  akin  to  that  fine  despair 

Before  the  foreheads  of  the  gods  of  song 

which  true  poets,  great  or  small,  know — that 
fine  despair  which,  while  it  will  sometimes  stop 
the  breath  of  one  of  the  true  sons  of  Apollo,  as 
it  actually  did  strike  mute  Charles  Wells,  and 
as  at  one  time  it  threatened  to  stop  the  breath 
of  Rossetti,  will  lead  others  to  write,  and  write, 
and  write.  It  is,  however,  life's  illusions  that 
in  most  cases  make  life  tolerable.  When  in  old 
age  calamity  came  upon  Hake,  and  he  was  shut 
out  from  life  as  by  a  prison  wall,  his  one  solace, 
the  one  thing  that  really  bound  him  to  life,  was 
this  ambitious  dream  which  came  upon  the 
Bluecoat  boy  of  eleven. 

His  mother  was  in  easy  circumstances,  and 
when  a  youth  Hake  travelled  a  good  deal  on 
the  Continent,  where  his  success  in  the  "  great 


210  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

world  "  of  that  time  was  swift  and  complete. 
If  this  success  was  owing  as  much  to  his  excep- 
tionally striking  personal  appearance  and  natural 
endowment  of  style  as  to  his  intellectual  equip- 
ments— high  as  these  were — that  is  not  surpris- 
ing to  those  who  knew  him.  Of  course  he  was 
well  advanced  in  years  before  I  was  old  enough 
to  call  him  my  friend  ;  but  even  then  he  was  so 
extremely  handsome  a  man  that  I  can  well 
believe  the  stories  I  have  got  from  his  family 
connexions  (such  as  his  wife's  sisters)  of  his 
appearance  in  youth.  With  the  single  excep- 
tion of  Tennyson,  he  was  the  most  poetical- 
looking  poet  I  have  ever  seen.  And  circum- 
stances put  to  the  best  uses  his  natural  gift  of 
style  ;  for  it  was  in  the  plastic  period  of  his  life 
that  he  met  the  best  people  on  the  Continent 
and  in  England.  I  suspect,  indeed,  that  after 
the  plastic  period  in  a  man's  life  is  passed  it  is 
not  of  much  use  for  him  to  come  into  contact 
with  what  used  to  be  called  "  the  great  world." 
To  be,  or  to  seem  to  be,  unconscious  of  one's 
own  bearing  towards  the  world,  and  unconscious 
of  the  world's  bearing  towards  oneself,  is,  I 
fancy,  impossible  to  a  man — even  though  he 
have  the  genius  and  intellectual  endowment  of 
a  Browning — who  is  for  the  first  time  brought 
into  touch  with  society  after  the  plastic  period 
is  passed. 

I  have  told  elsewhere  the  whimsical  story 
of  Hake  and  Rossetti,  of  Rossetti's  delightful 


DR.    GORDON    HAKE  211 

account  of  his  reading  as  a  boy,  in  a  coffee- 
house in  Chancery  Lane,  Hake's  remarkable 
romance  '  Vates,'  afterwards  called  '  Valdarno/ 
in  a  magazine  ;  his  writing  a  letter  about  it 
to  the  unknown  author,  and  getting  no  reply 
until  many  years  had  passed.  Hake's  rela- 
tions towards  Rossetti  were  of  the  deepest 
and  most  sacred  kind.  Rossetti  had  the 
highest  opinion  of  Hake's  poetical  genius,  and 
also  felt  towards  him  the  greatest  love  and 
gratitude  for  services  of  an  inestimable  kind 
rendered  to  him  in  the  direst  crisis  of  his 
life.  To  enter  upon  these  matters,  however, 
is  obviously  impossible  in  a  brief  and  hurried 
obituary  notice  ;  and  equally  impossible  is  it 
for  me  to  enter  into  the  poetic  principles  of  a 
writer  whose  very  originality  has  been  a  barrier 
to  his  winning  a  wide  recognition. 

Hake's  best  work  is  that,  I  think,  contained 
in  the  volume  called  '  New  Symbols/  in  which 
there  is  disclosed  an  extraordinary  variety  of 
poetic  power.  In  execution,  too,  he  is  at  his 
best  in  that  volume.  Christina  Rossetti  has 
often  told  me  that  '  Ecce  Homo  '  impressed  her 
more  profoundly  than  did  any  other  poem  of 
her  own  time.  Also  its  daring  startled  her.  It 
was,  however,  the  previous  volume,  '  Madeline, 
and  other  Poems,'  which  brought  him  into 
contact  with  Rossetti — the  great  event  of  his 
literary  life. 

If  the  man  ever  lived  who  could  take  as  much 


212  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

interest  in  another  man's  work  as  his  own, 
Dr.  Hake  in  finding  Rossetti  found  that  man. 
Although  at  that  time  Tennyson,  Browning, 
Matthew  Arnold,  William  Morris,  and  Swin- 
burne were  running  abreast  of  each  other,  there 
was  no  poet  in  England  who  would  not  have 
felt  honoured  by  having  his  work  reviewed  by 
Rossetti.  But  Dr.  Hake,  whose  name  was 
absolutely  unknown,  had  made  his  way  into 
Rossetti's  affections — as,  indeed,  he  made  his 
way  into  the  affections  of  all  who  knew  him — 
and  this  was  quite  enough  to  induce  Rossetti 
to  ask  Dr.  Appleton  for  leave  to  review  '  Made- 
line '  in  '71  in  The  Academy — a  request  which 
Appleton,  of  course,  was  delighted  to  grant. 
And  again,  when  in  1873  '  Parables  and  Tales  ' 
appeared,  Mr.  John  Morley,  we  may  be  sure, 
was  something  more  than  willing  to  let  Rossetti 
review  the  book  in  The  Fortnightly  Review ; 
and,  again,  when  '  New  Symbols '  appeared, 
there  was  some  talk  about  Rossetti's  reviewing 
it  in  The  Fortnightly  Review ;  but  this,  for 
certain  reasons  which  Rossetti  explained  to  me 
— reasons  which  have  been  misunderstood,  but 
which  were  entirely  adequate — was  abandoned. 
Down  to  the  period  when  Dr.  Hake  went  to 
live  in  Germany  he  and  his  son  Mr.  Gordon  Hake 
were  among  the  most  intimate  friends  of  the 
great  poet-painter.  Mr.  Gordon  Hake,  indeed, 
a  man  of  admirable  culture  and  abilities,  lived 
with  Rossetti,  who  certainly  benefited  much  by 


DR.   GORDON   HAKE  213 

contact  with  his  bright  and  lively  companion. 
The  portrait  of  Dr.  Hake  prefixed  to  Mrs. 
Meynell's  selections  from  his  works  is  one  of 
Rossetti's  finest  crayons.  It  is,  however,  too 
heavy  in  expression  for  Hake. 

Full  of  fine  qualities  as  is  his  best  poetry, 
full  of  intellectual  subtlety,  imagination,  and 
a  rare  combination  of  subjective  with  objective 
power,  there  is  apparently  in  it  a  certain  je  ne 
sais  quoi  which  has  prevented  him  at  present 
from  winning  his  true  meed  of  fame.  His 
hand,  no  doubt,  is  uncertain ;  but  so  is  the 
hand  of  many  a  successful  poet — that  of 
Christina  Rossetti,  for  instance.  For  sheer 
originality  of  conception  and  of  treatment 
what  recent  poems  surpass  or  even  equal  '  Old 
Souls '  and  the  '  Serpent  Charmer  '  ?  Then 
take  the  remarkable  mastery  over  colour  ex- 
hibited by  '  Ortrud's  Vision.'  His  volume  of 
pantheistic  sonnets  in  the  Shakespearean  form, 
'  The  New  Day,'  written  in  his  eighty-first 
year,  is  on  the  whole,  however,  his  most 
remarkable  work.  The  kind  of  Sufeyistic  nature 
ecstasy  displayed  therein  by  a  man  of  so  ad- 
vanced an  age  is  nothing  less  than  wonderful. 
And  as  to  knowledge  of  nature,  not  even  Words- 
worth or  Tennyson  knew  nature  so  completely 
as  did  Hake,  for  he  had  a  thorough  training  as 
a  naturalist.  In  looking  at  a  flower  he  could 
enjoy  not  only  its  beauty,  but  also  the  delight 
of  picturing  to  himself  the  flower's  inherited 


214  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

beauty  and  the  ancestors  from  which  the  flower 
got  its  inheritance.  And  as  regards  the  lyrical 
flow  imported  into  so  monumental  a  form  as 
the  sonnet,  every  student  of  this  form  must 
needs  study  the  book  with  the  greatest  interest. 
His  very  latest  work,  however,  is  in  prose. 
I  find  it  extremely  difficult  to  write  about 
'  Memoirs  of  Eighty  Years.'  It  is  full  of 
remarkable  qualities  :  wit,  humour,  an  ebulli- 
ence of  animal  spirits  that  is  Rabelaisian.  What 
it  lacks  (and  in  some  portions  of  it  greatly  lacks) 
is  delicacy,  refinement  of  tone.  And  surely 
this  is  remarkable  when  we  realize  the  kind  of 
man  he  was  who  wrote  it. 

It  has  been  my  privilege  to  go  about  with 
him  not  only  in  London,  but  also  in  Rome,  in 
Paris,  hi  Venice,  in  Florence,  Pisa,  &c.  ;  and 
no  matter  what  might  be  the  quality  of  the 
society  with  which  he  was  brought  into  contact, 
it  always  seemed  to  me  that  he  was  distin- 
guished by  his  very  lack  of  that  accentuated 
movement  which  the  litterateur  generally  dis- 
plays. I  merely  dwell  upon  this  to  show  how 
inscrutable  are  the  mental  processes  in  the 
crowning  puzzle  of  the  great  humourist  Nature, 
the  writing  man.  Just  as  the  most  angular 
and  gauche  man  in  a  literary  gathering  may  pos- 
sibly turn  out  to  be  the  poet  whose  lyrics  have 
been  compared  to  Shelley,  or  the  prose  writer 
whose  mellifluous  periods  have  been  compared 
to  those  of  Plato,  so  the  most  dignified  man  in 


DR.    GORDON   HAKE  215 

the  room  may  turn  out  to  be  the  writer  of  a 
book  whose  defect  is  a  noticeable  lack  of 
dignified  style.  It  was  hard,  indeed,  for  those 
who  knew  Hake  in  the  flesh  to  believe  that  the 
'  Memoirs  of  Eighty  Years  '  was  written  by  him. 
I  suppose  I  shall  be  expected  to  say  a  word 
about  the  famous  intimacy  between  Hake  and 
Borrow.  After  Hake  went  to  live  in  Germany, 
Borrow  told  me  a  good  deal  about  this  intimacy 
and  also  about  his  own  early  life ;  for  reticent 
as  he  naturally  was,  he  and  I  got  to  be  con- 
fidential and  intimate.  His  friendship  with 
Hake  began  when  Hake  was  practising  as  a 
physician  in  Norfolk.  It  lasted  during  the 
greater  part  of  Sorrow's  later  life.  When 
Borrow  was  living  in  London,  his  great  delight 
was  to  walk  over  on  Sundays  from  Hereford 
Square  to  Coombe  End,  call  upon  Hake,  and 
take  a  stroll  with  him  over  Richmond  Park. 
They  both  had  a  passion  for  herons  and  for 
deer.  At  that  time  Hake  was  a  very  intimate 
friend  of  my  own,  and  having  had  the  good 
fortune  to  be  introduced  by  him  to  Borrow, 
I  used  to  join  the  two  in  their  walks.  After- 
wards, when  Hake  went  to  live  in  Germany, 
I  used  to  take  these  walks  with  Borrow  alone. 
Two  more  interesting  men  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  meet.  The  remarkable  thing  was 
that  there  was  between  them  no  sort  of  intel- 
lectual sympathy.  In  style,  in  education,  in 
experience,  whatever  Hake  was  Borrow  was 


216  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

not.  Borrow  knew  almost  nothing  of  Hake's 
writings,  either  in  prose  or  in  verse.  His  ideal 
poet  was  Pope,  and  when  he  read,  or  rather 
looked  into,  Hake's  '  World's  Epitaph/  he 
thought  he  did  Hake  the  greatest  honour  by 
saying,  "  There  are  lines  here  and  there  that 
are  nigh  as  good  as  Pope's."  On  the  other 
hand,  Hake's  acquaintance  with  Borrow's  works 
was  far  behind  that  of  some  Borrovians  who 
did  not  know  Lavengro  in  the  flesh,  such  as 
Mr.  Saintsbury  and  Mr.  Birrell. 

Borrow  was  shy,  eccentric,  angular,  rustic  in 
accent  and  in  locution,  but  with  a  charm  for  me, 
at  least,  that  was  irresistible.  Hake  was 
polished,  easy,  and  urbane  in  everything,  and, 
although  not  without  prejudice  and  bias,  ready 
to  shine  gracefully  in  any  society.  As  far  as 
Hake  was  concerned,  the  sole  link  between  them 
was  that  of  reminiscence  of  earlier  days  and 
adventures  in  Borrow's  beloved  East  Anglia. 
Among  many  proofs  that  I  could  adduce  of  this, 
I  will  give  one.  I  am  the  possessor  of  the 
manuscript  of  Borrow's  '  Gypsies  in  Spain,' 
written  partly  in  a  Spanish  note-book  as  he 
moved  about  Spain  in  his  colporteur  days. 
It  was  my  wish  that  Hake  would  leave  behind 
him  some  memorial  of  Borrow  more  worthy  of 
himself  and  his  friend  than  those  brief  remi- 
niscences contained  in  '  Memoirs  of  Eighty 
Years.'  I  took  to  Hake  this  precious  relic  of 
one  of  the  most  wonderful  men  of  the  nine- 


DR.    GORDON    HAKE  217 

teenth  century  in  order  to  discuss  with  him 
differences  between  the  MS.  and  the  printed 
text.  Hake  was  sitting  in  his  invalid  chair, 
writing  verses.  "  What  does  it  all  matter  ?  " 
he  said.  "I  do  not  think  you  understand 
Lavengro,"  said  I.  Hake  replied,  "  And  yet 
Lavengro  had  an  advantage  over  me,  for  he 
understood  nobody.  Every  individuality  with 
which  he  was  brought  into  contact  had,  as  no 
one  knows  better  than  you,  to  be  tinged  with 
colours  of  his  own  before  he  could  see  it  at  all." 
This,  of  course,  was  true  enough ;  and 
Hake's  asperities  when  speaking  of  Borrow  in 
'  Memoirs  of  Eighty  Years  ' — asperities  which 
have  vexed  a  good  many  Borrovians — simply 
arose  from  the  fact  that  it  was  impossible  for 
two  such  men  to  understand  each  other.  When 
I  told  him  of  Andrew  Lang's  angry  onslaught 
upon  Borrow,  in  his  notes  to  the  "  Waverley 
Novels,"  on  account  of  his  attacks  upon  Scott, 
he  said,  "  Well,  and  does  he  not  deserve  it  ?  " 
When  I  told  him  of  Miss  Cobbe's  description  of 
Borrow  as  a  poseur,  he  said  to  me,  "  I  told  you 
the  same  scores  of  times.  But  I  saw  that 
Borrow  had  bewitched  you  during  that  first 
walk  under  the  rainbow  in  Richmond  Park. 
It  was  that  rainbow,  I  think,  that  befooled  you." 
Borrow's  affection  for  Hake,  however,  was  both 
strong  and  deep,  as  I  saw  after  Hake  had  gone 
to  Germany  and  in  a  way  dropped  out  of 
Borrow's  ken.  Yet  Hake  was  as  good  a  man 


218  OLD   FAMILIAR    FACES 

as  ever  Borrow  was,  and  for  certain  others  with 
whom  he  was  brought  in  contact  as  full  of  a 
genuine  affection  as  Borrow  was  himself. 


JOHN    LEICESTER    WARREN, 
LORD   DE   TABLEY. 

1835-1895. 
i. 

IN  the  death  of  Lord  de  Tabley,  the  English 
world  of  letters  has  lost  a  true  poet  and 
a  scholar  of  very  varied  accomplishments. 
His  friends  have  lost  much  more.  Since  his 
last  attack  of  influenza,  those  who  knew  him 
and  loved  him  had  been  much  concerned  about 
him.  The  pallor  of  his  complexion  had  greatly 
increased  ;  so  had  his  feebleness.  As  long  ago 
as  May  last,  when  I  called  upon  him  at  the 
Athenaeum  Club  in  order  to  join  him  at  a 
luncheon  he  was  giving  at  the  Caf£  Royal,  I 
found  that  he  had  engaged  a  four-wheeled  cab 
to  take  us  over  those  few  yards.  The  expression 
in  his  kind  and  wistful  blue-grey  eyes  showed 
that  he  had  noted  the  start  of  surprise  I  gave 
on  seeing  the  cab  waiting  for  us.  '  You  know 
my  love  of  a  growler,"  he  said ;  "  this  is  just 
to  save  us  the  bother  of  getting  across  the 
Piccadilly  cataracts."  I  thought  to  myself,  "  I 
wish  it  were  only  the  bother  of  crossing  the 
cataracts  which  accounts  for  the  growler." 

219 


220  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

Another  sign  that  the  physical  part  of  him 
was  in  the  grip  of  the  demon  of  decay  was  that, 
instead  of  coming  to  the  Pines  to  luncheon,  as 
had  been  his  wont,  he  preferred  of  late  to  come 
to  afternoon  tea,  and  return  to  Elm  Park  before 
dinner.  And  on  the  occasion  when  he  last 
came  in  this  way  it  seemed  to  us  here  that  he 
had  aged  still  more ;  yet  his  intellectual  forces 
had  lost  nothing  of  their  power.  And  as  a 
companion  he  was  as  winsome  as  ever.  That 
fine  quality  with  which  he  was  so  richly  en- 
dowed, the  quality  which  used  to  be  called 
"  urbanity,"  was  as  fresh  when  I  saw  him  last 
as  when  I  first  knew  him.  That  sweet  sagacity, 
mellowed  and  softened  by  a  peculiarly  quiet 
humour,  shone  from  his  face  at  intervals  as  he 
talked  of  the  pleasant  old  days  when  he  was  my 
colleague  on  The  Athenceum,  and  when  I  used 
to  call  upon  him  so  frequently  on  my  way  to 
Rossetti  in  Cheyne  Walk  to  chat  over  "  the 
walnuts  and  the  wine  "  about  poetry. 

My  own  friendship  with  him  began  at  my 
first  meeting  him,  and  this  was  long  ago.  Being 
at  that  time  a  less-known  man  of  letters  than  I 
am  now,  supposing  that  to  be  possible,  I  was 
astonished  one  day  when  my  friend  Edmund 
Gosse  told  me  that  his  friend  Leicester  Warren 
had  expressed  a  wish  to  meet  me  on  account  of 
certain  things  of  mine  which  he  had  read  in  The 
Examiner  and  The  Athenczum.  I  accepted  with 
alacrity  Mr.  Gosse's  invitation  to  one  of  those 


LORD  DE  TABLEY  221 

charming  salons  of  his  on  the  banks  of  West- 
bournia's  Grand  Canal  which  have  become 
historic.  I  was  surprised  to  find  Warren,  who 
was  then  scarcely  above  forty,  looking  so  old, 
not  to  say  so  old-fashioned.  At  that  time  he 
did  not  wear  the  moustache  and  beard  which 
afterwards  lent  a  picturesqueness  to  his  face. 
There  was  a  kind  of  rural  appearance  about 
him  which  had  for  me  a  charm  of  its  own ;  it 
suited  so  well  with  his  gentle  ways,  I  thought. 
This  being  the  impression  he  made  upon  me, 
it  may  be  imagined  how  delighted  I  was  shortly 
afterwards  to  see  him  come  to  the  door  of 
Ivy  Lodge,  Putney,  where  I  was  then  living 
alone.  Nor  was  I  less  surprised  than  delighted 
to  see  him.  On  realizing  at  Gosse's  salon  that 
my  new  acquaintance  was  a  botanist,  I  had 
fraternized  with  him  on  this  point,  and  had 
described  to  him  an  extremely  rare  and  lovely 
little  tree  growing  in  the  centre  of  my  garden, 
which  some  unknown  lover  of  trees  had  im- 
ported. I  had  given  Warren  a  kind  of  general 
invitation  to  come  some  day  and  see  it.  So 
early  a  call  as  this  I  had  not  hoped  to  get. 
Perhaps  I  thought  so  reclusive  a  man  as  he 
even  then  appeared  would  never  come  at  all. 

After  having  duly  admired  the  tree  he  turned 
to  the  Rossetti  crayons  on  the  walls  of  the 
rooms  ;  but  although  he  talked  much  about 
'  The  Spirit  of  the  Rainbow  '  and  the  design 
from  the  same  beautiful  model  which  William 


222  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

Sharp  has  christened  '  Forced  Music/  the 
loveliness  of  which  attracted  him  not  a  little, 
I  perceived  that  he  had  something  else  that  he 
wanted  to  talk  about,  and  allowed  him  to  lead 
the  conversation  up  to  it.  To  my  surprise  I 
found  that,  so  far  from  having  perceived  how 
much  he  had  interested  me,  he  had  imagined 
that  my  attitude  towards  him  was  constrained, 
and  had  explained  it  to  his  own  discomfort  after 
the  following  fashion  :  "  Watts  has  an  intimate 
friend  of  whose  poetry  I  am  a  deep  admirer — 
so  deep  indeed  that  some  people,  and  not  without 
reason,  have  said  that  my  own  poetry  is  unduly 
influenced  by  it.  But  an  article  by  me  in  The 
Fortnightly  goes  out  of  its  way  to  dub  as  a 
'  minor  poet '  the  very  writer  to  whose  influence 
I  have  succumbed.  It  is  the  incongruity 
between  my  dubbing  my  idol  a  '  minor  poet  ' 
and  my  real  and  most  obvious  admiration  of 
his  work  that  makes  Watts,  in  spite  of  an  ex- 
ternal civility,  feel  unfriendly  towards  me. 
Yet  there  is  no  real  incongruity,  for  it  was  the 
editor,  G.  H.  Lewes,  who,  after  my  proof  had 
been  returned  for  press,  interpolated  the  objec- 
tionable words  about  the  minor  poet." 

This  was  how  he  had  been  reasoning. 
When  I  laughed  and  told  him  to  recast  his 
syllogism — told  him  that  I  had  never  seen  the 
article  in  question,  and  doubted  whether  my 
friend  had — matters  became  very  bright  be- 
tween us.  He  stayed  to  luncheon  ;  we  walked 


LORD  DE  TABLEY  223 

on  the  Common  ;  I  showed  him  our  Wimbledon 
sun-dews  ;  in  a  word,  I  felt  that  I  had  discovered 
a  richer  gold  mine  than  the  richest  in  the  world, 
a  new  friend.  Had  I  then  known  him  as  well 
as  I  afterwards  did,  I  should  have  been  aware 
that  he  had  a  strong  dash  of  the  sensitive,  not 
to  say  the  morbid,  in  his  nature.  He  had  a 
habit  of  submitting  almost  every  incident  of 
his  life  to  such  an  analysis  as  that  I  have  been 
describing. 

On  another  occasion,  when  years  later  he  had 
a  difference  with  a  friend,  I  reminded  him  of 
the  incident  recorded  above,  and  made  him 
laugh  by  saying,  "  My  dear  Warren,  you  are  so 
afraid  of  treading  on  people's  corns  that  you 
tread  upon  them." 

On  first  visiting  him,  as  on  many  a  subsequent 
occasion,  1  was  struck  by  the  variety  of  his 
intellectual  interests,  and  the  thoroughness  with 
which  he  pursued  them  all.  I  have  lately  said 
in  print  what  I  fully  believe — that  he  was  the 
most  learned  of  English  poets,  if  learning  means 
something  more  than  mere  scholarship.  He 
was  a  skilled  numismatist,  and  in  1862  pub- 
lished, through  the  Numismatic  Society,  '  An 
Essay  on  Greek  Federal  Coinage,'  and  an  essay 
'  On  Some  Coins  of  Lycia  under  Rhodian 
Domination  and  of  the  Lycian  League.'  He 
even  took  an  interest  in  book-plates,  and 
actually,  in  1880,  published  '  A  Guide  to  the 
Study  of  Book-Plates.'  I  should  not  have  been 


224  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

at  all  surprised  to  learn  that  he  was  also  writing 
a  guide  for  the  collectors  of  postage  stamps. 

At  this  time  he  had  published  a  good  deal 
of  verse  ;  for  instance,  '  Eclogues  and  Mono- 
dramas  '  in  1865  ;  '  Studies  in  Verse  '  in  1866  ; 
'  Orestes  '  in  1867  ;  a  collection  of  poems  called 
'  Rehearsals  '  in  1873  ;  another  collection,  called 
'  The  Searching  Net/  in  1876.  From  this 
time,  during  many  years,  I  saw  him  frequently, 
although,  for  a  reason  which  it  is  not  necessary 
to  discuss  here,  he  became  seized  with  a  deep 
dislike  of  the  literary  world  and  its  doings,  and 
I  am  not  aware  that  he  saw  any  literary  man 
save  myself  and  the  late  W.  B.  Scott,  the  bond 
between  whom  and  himself  was  "  book-plates  "  ! 
Then  he  took  to  residing  in  the  country.  As 
a  poet  he  seemed  to  be  quite  forgotten,  save  by 
students  of  poetry,  until  his  name  was  revived 
by  means  of  Mr.  Miles's  colossal  anthology '  The 
Poets  and  the  Poetry  of  the  Nineteenth  Century/ 
Mr.  Miles,  it  seems,  was  a  great  admirer  of  Lord 
de  Tabley's  poetry,  and  managed  to  reach  the 
hermit  in  his  cell.  In  the  sixth  volume  of  his 
work  Mr.  Miles  gave  a  judicious  selection  from 
Lord  de  Tabley's  poems  and  an  admirable  essay 
upon  them.  The  selection  attracted  a  good 
deal  of  attention. 

On  finding  that  the  public  would  listen  to 
him,  I  urged  him  to  bring  out  a  volume  of 
selected  pieces  from  all  his  works,  an  idea  which 
for  some  time  he  contested  with  his  usual 


LORD  DE  TABLEY  225 

pessimistic  vigour.  Having,  however,  set  my 
heart  upon  it,  I  spoke  upon  the  subject  to  Mr. 
John  Lane,  who  at  once  saw  his  way  to  bring 
out  such  a  volume  at  his  own  risk.  To  the 
poet's  astonishment  the  book  was  a  success,  and 
it  at  once  passed  into  a  second  edition.  In  the 
spring  of  this  year  he  was  emboldened  to  bring 
out  another  volume  of  new  poems,  and  his  name 
became  firmly  re-established  as  a  poet.  It  was 
after  the  success  of  the  first  book  that  he  con- 
sulted me  upon  a  question  which  was  then  upon 
his  mind  :  Should  he  devote  his  future  energies 
to  literature  or  to  making  himself  a  position  as 
a  speaker  in  the  Lords  ?  He  had  lately  had 
occasion  to  speak  both  in  the  country  and  in 
the  Lords  upon  some  local  matter  of  importance, 
and  his  success  had  in  some  slight  degree 
revived  an  old  aspiration  to  plunge  into  the 
world  of  politics.  He  was  a  Liberal,  and  in 
1868  he  had  contested — but  unsuccessfully — 
Mid-Cheshire.  This  was  on  the  first  election  for 
that  division  after  the  Reform  Act  of  1867. 
His  support  in  a  county  so  Conservative  as 
Cheshire  had  really  been  very  strong,  but  he 
never  made  another  effort  to  get  into  Parliament. 
"  You  know  my  way,"  he  used  to  say.  "  I  can 
make  one  spring — perhaps  a  pretty  good  spring 
— but  not  more  than  one." 

On  the  whole,  he  leaned  towards  the  idea  of 
going  into  politics.  The  way  in  which  he  put 
the  case  to  me  was  thoroughly  characteristic  of 


226  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

him  :  "  Even  if  my  verse  were  strong  and  vital, 
which  I  fear  it  is  not,  there  is  almost  no  chance 
for  men  of  my  generation  receiving  more  than 
a  slight  attention  at  the  present  day.  Things 
have  altogether  changed  since  the  sixties  and 
seventies,  when  I  published  my  most  important 
work — at  a  time  when  the  prominent  names 
were  Tennyson,  Browning,  Matthew  Arnold, 
Rossetti,  Morris,  and  Swinburne.  The  old 
critical  oracles  are  now  dumb ;  the  reviewers 
are  all  young  men  whose  knowledge  of  poetry 
does  not  go  back  so  far  as  the  sixties.  Those 
who  reviewed  the  selection  from  my  work  in 
Miles's  book  showed  themselves  to  be  entirely 
unconscious  of  the  name  of  Leicester  Warren, 
and  treated  the  poems  there  selected  as  being 
the  work  of  a  new  writer ;  and  even  when  the 
poems  published  by  Lane  came  out,  no  one 
seemed  to  be  aware  that  they  were  by  a  writer 
who  was  very  much  to  the  fore  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago.  That  book  has  had  a  flutter  of 
success,  but  in  how  large  a  degree  was  the 
success  owing  to  the  curiosity  excited  by  the 
book  of  a  man  of  my  generation  being  brought 
out  now,  and  by  the  publisher  of  the  men  of 
this  ?  With  all  my  sympathy  with  the  work 
of  the  younger  men  and  my  admiration  of  some 
of  it,  things,  I  say,  have  changed  since  those 
days." 

I    did    not    share    these    pessimistic    views. 
Moreover,   knowing  as  I   did  how  extremely 


LORD  DE  TABLEY  227 

sensitive  he  was,  I  knew  that  his  figuring  in 
Parliament  would  result  in  the  greatest  pain  to 
him,  and  if  I  gave  a  somewhat  exaggerated 
expression  with  regard  to  my  hopes  of  him  in 
the  literary  world,  it  was  a  kindly  feeling 
towards  himself  that  impelled  me  to  do  so. 
He  took  my  advice  and  proceeded  to  gather 
material  for  another  volume. 

To  define  clearly  the  impression  left  upon  one 
by  intercourse  with  any  man  is  difficult.  In 
De  Tabley's  case  it  is  almost  impossible.  His 
remarkable  modesty,  or  rather  diffidence,  was 
what,  perhaps,  struck  me  most.  It  was  a 
genuine  lack  of  faith  in  his  own  powers ;  it  had 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  "  mock-modesty." 
I  had  a  singular  instance  of  this  diffidence  in 
the  autumn  of  last  year.  Lord  de  Tabley,  who 
was  staying  at  Ryde,  having  learnt  that  I  was 
staying  with  a  friend  near  Niton  Bay,  wrote  to 
me  there  saying  that  he  somewhat  specially 
wanted  to  see  me,  and  proposed  our  lunching 
together  at  an  hotel  at  Ventnor.  I  was  de- 
lighted to  accede  to  this,  for,  like  all  who  fully 
knew  Lord  de  Tabley,  I  was  thoroughly  and 
deeply  attached  to  him.  He  was  so  geniuine 
and  so  modest  and  so  genial — unsoured  by  the 
great  and  various  sorrows  of  which  he  used 
sometimes  to  talk  to  me  by  the  cosy  study  fire — 
nay,  sweetened  by  them,  as  I  often  thought — 
so  grateful  for  the  smallest  service  rendered  in 
an  arena  where  ingratitude  sometimes  seems 


228  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

to  be  the  vis  matrix  of  life — &  truly  lovable  man, 
if  ever  there  was  one. 

I  drove  over  to  Ventnor.  As  I  chanced  to 
reach  the  hotel  somewhat  before  the  appointed 
time,  and  he  had  not  arrived,  I  drove  on  to 
Bonchurch  along  the  Shanklin  road.  On  my 
way  back,  I  passed  a  four-wheel  cab  ;  but  not 
dreaming  that  his  love  of  the  "  growler " 
reached  beyond  London,  I  never  thought  of 
him  in  connexion  with  it  until  I  saw  the  well- 
known  face  with  its  sweet  thoughtful  expression 
looking  through  the  cab  window.  On  this 
occasion  it  looked  so  specially  thoughtful  that 
I  imagined  something  serious  had  occurred. 
At  the  hotel  I  found  that  he  had  secured  a  snug 
room  and  a  luxurious  luncheon.  An  ominous 
packet  of  writing-paper  peering  from  his  over- 
coat pocket  convinced  me  that  it  was  a  manu- 
script brought  for  me  to  read,  and  feeling  that 
I  should  prefer  to  get  it  over  before  luncheon, 
I  asked  him  to  show  it  to  me.  He  then  told 
me  its  history.  Having  sent  by  special  invita- 
tion a  poem  to  The  Nineteenth  Century,  the 
editor  had  returned  it — returned  it  with  certain 
strictures  upon  portions  of  it.  This  incident 
he  had  at  once  subjected  to  the  usual  analysis, 
and  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  certain 
outside  influences  of  an  invidiousf  kind  had  been 
brought  to  play  upon  the  editor. 

Time  was  when  I  should  have  shrunk  with 
terror  from  so  thankless  a  task  as  that  of  reading 


LORD  DE  TABLEY  229 

a  manuscript  with  such  a  frightful  history,  but 
it  is  astonishing  what  a  long  experience  in  the 
literary  world  will  do  for  a  man  in  perplexities 
of  this  kind.  I  read  the  manuscript  and  the 
editor's  courteous  but  sagacious  comments,  and 
I  found  that  the  poet  had  undertaken  a  subject 
which  was  utterly  and  almost  inconceivably 
alien  to  his  genius.  As  I  read  I  felt  the  wistful 
gaze  fixed  upon  me  while  the  waiter  was  moving 
in  and  out  of  the  room,  preparing  the  luncheon 
table.  '  Well,"  said  he,  as  I  laid  the  manuscript 
down,  "  what  do  you  think  ?  do  you  agree  with 
the  editor  ?  "  "  Not  entirely,"  I  said.  "  Not 
entirely  !  "  he  exclaimed  ;  then  turning  to  the 
waiter,  he  said,  "  You  can  leave  the  soup,  and 
I  will  ring  when  we  are  ready."  "  Not  entirely," 
I  repeated.  "  With  all  the  editor's  strictures  I 
entirely  agree,  but  he  says  that  by  working  upon 
it  you  may  make  it  into  a  worthy  poem  :  there 
I  disagree  with  him.  I  consider  it  absolutely 
hopeless.  I  regret  now  that  we  did  not  leave 
the  matter  until  after  luncheon,  but  we  will  not 
let  it  spoil  our  appetites." 

I  am  afraid  it  did  spoil  our  appetites  never- 
theless, for  I  felt  that  I  had  been  compelled, 
for  his  own  sake,  to  give  him  pain.  He  was 
much  depressed,  declared  that  the  success  of 
his  late  book  was  entirely  factitious,  and  vowed 
that  nothing  should  ever  persuade  him  to  write 
another  line  of  verse,  and  that  he  would  now 
devote  his  attention  to  a  peer's  duties  in  the 


230  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

House  of  Lords.  I  was  so  disturbed  myself  at 
thus  paining  so  lovable  a  friend  that  next  day 
I  wrote  to  him,  trying  to  soften  what  I  had  said, 
and  urged  him  to  do  as  the  editor  of  The 
Nineteenth  Century  had  suggested,  write  another 
poem — a  poem  upon  some  classical  subject, 
which  he  would  deal  with  so  admirably.  The 
result  of  it  all  was  that  he  found  the  editor's 
strictures  on  the  unlucky  poem  to  be  absolutely 
well  grounded,  and  wrote  for  The  Nineteenth 
Century  '  Orpheus/  one  of  the  finest  of  his 
later  poems. 

I  think  these  anecdotes  of  Lord  de  Tabley 
will  show  why  we  who  knew  him  were  so  at- 
tached to  him. 


II. 

CAN  it  be  claimed  for  Lord  de  Tabley  that 
in  the  poetical  firmament  which  hung 
over  the  days  of  his  youth — when  the 
heavens  were  bright  with  such  luminaries 
as  Tennyson,  Browning,  Matthew  Arnold, 
Rossetti,  Swinburne,  and  Morris — he  had  a 
place  of  his  own  ?  We  think  it  can.  And  hi 
saying  this  we  are  fully  conscious  of  the  kind 
of  praise  we  are  awarding  him.  Whatever  may 
be  said  for  or  against  the  artistic  temper  of  the 
present  hour,  it  must  certainly  be  said  of  the  time 
we  are  alluding  to  that  it  was  great  as  regards 
its  wealth  of  poetic  genius,  and  as  regards 
its  artistic  temper  greater  still.  It  was  a  time 
when  "  the  beauteous  damsel  Poesy,  honourable 
and  retired,"  whom  Cervantes  described,  dared 
still  roam  the  English  Parnassus,  "  a  friend  of 
solitude,"  disturbed  by  no  clash  of  Notoriety's 
brazen  cymbals,  "  where  fountains  entertained 
her,  woods  freed  her  from  ennui,  and  flowers 
delighted  her  " — delighted  her  for  their  own 
sakes.  In  order  to  write  such  verses  as  the 
following  from  the  concluding  poem  of  the 
volume  before  us*  a  man  must  really  have  passed 

* '  Poems,  Dramatic  and  Lyrical.'     By  Lord  de  Tabley. 
Second  Series.     (Lane.) 

231 


232  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

into  that  true  mood  of  the  poet  described  by 
the  great  Spanish  humourist : — 

How  idle  for  a  spurious  fame 

To  roll  in  thorn-beds  of  unrest ; 
What  matter  whom  the  mob  acclaim, 

If  thou  art  master  of  thy  breast  ? 

If  sick  thy  soul  with  fear  and  doubt, 
And  weary  with  the  rabble  din, — 

If  thou  wouldst  scorn  the  herd  without, 
First  make  the  discord  calm  within. 

If  we  are  lords  in  our  disdain, 

And  rule  our  kingdoms  of  despair, 

As  fools  we  shall  not  plough  the  main 
For  halters  made  of  syren's  hair. 

We  need  not  traverse  foreign  earth 
To  seek  an  alien  Sorrow's  face. 

She  sits  within  thy  central  hearth, 
And  at  thy  table  has  her  place. 

So  with  this  hour  of  push  and  pelf, 
Where  nought  unsordid  seems  to  last, 

Vex  not  thy  miserable  self, 

But  search  the  fallows  of  the  past. 

In  Time's  rich  track  behind  us  lies 
A  soil  replete  with  root  and  seed ; 

There  harvest  wheat  repays  the  wise, 
While  idiots  find  but  charlock  weed. 

Between  the  writer  of  the  above  lines  and 
those  great  poets  who  in  his  youth  were  his 
contemporaries  there  is  this  point  of  affinity  : 
like  them  his  actual  achievements  do  not 
strike  the  reader  so  forcibly  as  the  potentialities 
which  those  achievements  reveal.  In  the  same 
way  that  Achilles  was  suggested  by  his  "  spear  " 
in  the  picture  in  the  chamber  of  Lucrece,  the 
poet  who  writes  not  for  fame,  but  writes  to 


LORD   DE   TABLEY  233 

please  himself,  suggests  unconsciously  his  own 
portrait  by  every  touch  : — 

For  much  imaginery  work  was  there ; 
Conceit  deceitful,  so  compact,  so  kind, 
That  for  Achilles'  image  stood  his  spear 
Grip'd  in  an  armed  hand  ;  himself  behind 
Was  left  unseen  save  to  the  eye  of  mind : 
A  hand,  a  foot,  a  face,  a  leg-,  a  head, 
Stood  for  the  whole  to  be  imagined. 

Poets,  indeed,  have  always  been  divisible  into 
those  whose  poetry  gives  the  reader  an  im- 
pression that  they  are  greater  than  their  work, 
and  those  whose  poetry  gives  the  reader  a 
contrary  impression.  There  have  always  been 
poets  who  may  say  of  themselves,  like  the 
"  Poet  "  in  '  Timon  of  Athens/ 

Our  poesy  is  as  a  gum,  which  oozes 

From  whence  'tis  nourished :  the  fire  i'  the  flint 

Shows  not  till  it  be  struck. 

And  there  have  always  been  poets  whose  verse, 
howsoever  good  it  may  be,  shows  that,  although 
they  have  been  able  to  mould  into  poetic  forms 
the  riches  of  the  life  around  them,  and  also  of 
the  literature  which  has  come  to  them  as  an 
inheritance,  they  are  simply  working  for  fame, 
or  rather  for  notoriety,  in  the  markets  of  the 
outer  world.  The  former  can  give  us  an 
impression  of  personal  greatness  such  as  the 
latter  cannot. 

With  regard  to  the  originality  of  Lord  de 
Tabley's  work,  it  is  obvious  that  every  poet 
must  in  some  measure  be  influenced  by  the 


234  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

leading  luminaries  of  his  own  period.  But  at 
no  time  would  it  have  been  fair  to  call  Lord  de 
Tabley  an  imitator ;  and  in  the  new  poems  in 
this  volume  the  accent  is,  perhaps,  more  in- 
dividual than  was  the  accent  of  any  of  his 
previous  poetry.  The  general  re?der's  com- 
paratively slight  acquaintance  with  Greek  poetry 
may  become  unfortunate  for  modern  poets. 
Often  and  often  it  occurs  that  a  poet  is  charged 
with  imitating  another  poet  of  a  more  prominent 
position  than  his  own  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
both  poets  have  been  yielding  to  the  magic 
influence  of  some  poet  of  Greece.  Such  a  yield- 
ing has  been  held  to  be  legitimate  in  every 
literature  of  the  modern  world.  Indeed,  to  be 
coloured  by  the  great  classics  of  Greek  and 
Roman  literature  is  the  inevitable  destiny  and  the 
special  glory  of  all  the  best  poetry  of  the  modern 
world,  as  it  is  the  inevitable  destiny  and  the 
special  glory  of  the  far-off  waters  of  the  Nile  to 
be  enriched  and  toned  by  the  far-off  wealth 
of  Ruwenzori  and  the  ,great  fertilizing  lakes 
from  which  they  have  sprung.  But  in  drawing 
from  the  eternal  fountains  of  beauty  Lord  de 
Tabley's  processes  were  not  those  of  his  great 
contemporaries ;  they  were  very  specially  his 
own,  as  far  removed  from  the  severe  method  of 
Matthew  Arnold  on  the  one  hand  as  from 
Tennyson's  method  on  the  other. 

His  way  of  work  was  always-  to  illustrate 
a    story   of   Hellenic   myth   by   symbols   and 


LORD  DE  TABLEY  235 

analogies  drawn  not  from  the  more  complex 
economies  of  a  later  world,  as  was  Tennyson's 
way,  but  from  that  wide  knowledge  ol  the 
phenomena  of  nature  which  can  be  attained 
only  by  a  poet  whose  knowledge  is  that  of  the 
naturalist.  His  devotion  to  certain  depart- 
ments of  natural  science  has  been  running 
parallel  with  his  devotion  to  poetry,  and  if 
learning  is  something  wider  than  scholarship, 
he  is  the  most  learned  poet  of  his  time.  While 
Tennyson's  knowledge  of  natural  science, 
though  wide,  was  gathered  from  books,  Lord 
de  Tabley's  knowledge,  especially  in  the  depart- 
ment of  botany,  is  derived  largely  from  original 
observation  and  inquiry.  And  this  knowledge 
enables  him  to  make  his  poetry  alive  with 
organic  detail  such  as  satisfies  the  naturalist 
as  fully  as  the  other  qualities  in  his  works  satisfy 
the  lover  of  poetry.  The  leading  poem  of  the 
present  volume,  '  Orpheus  in  Hades,'  is  full  of 
a  knowledge  of  the  ways  of  nature  beyond  the 
reach  of  most  poets,  and  yet  this  knowledge  is 
kept  well  in  governance  by  his  artistic  sense ; 
it  is  never  obtruded — never  more  than  hinted  at, 
indeed : — 

Soon,  soon  I  saw  the  spectral  vanguard  come, 
Coasting-  along-,  as  swallows,  beating  low 
Before  a  hint  of  rain.     In  buoyant  air, 
Circling-  thy  poise,  and  hardly  move  the  wing, 
And  rather  float  than  fly.     Then  other  spirits, 
Shrill  and  more  fierce,  came  wailing  down  the  gale ; 
As  plaintive  plovers  came  with  swoop  and  scream 


236  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

To  lure  our  footsteps  from  their  furrowy  nest, 
So  these,  as  lapwing-  guardians,  sailed  and  swung 
To  save  the  secrets  of  their  gloomy  lair. 


I  hate  to  watch  the  flower  set  up  its  face. 
I  loathe  the  trembling-  shimmer  of  the  sea, 
Its  heaving  roods  of  intertangled  weed 
And  orange  sea-wrack  with  its  necklace  fruit ; 
The  stale,  insipid  cadence  of  the  dawn, 
The  ringdove,  tedious  harper  on  five  tones, 
The  eternal  havoc  of  the  sodden  leaves, 
Rotting  the  floors  of  Autumn. 

'  The  Death  of  Phaethon '  is  another  poem 
in  which  Lord  de  Tabley  succeeds  in  mingling 
a  true  poetic  energy  with  that  subtle  dignity  of 
utterance  which  can  never  really  be  divorced 
from  true  poetry,  whether  the  poet's  subject  be 
lofty  or  homely. 

The  line 

With  sudden  ray  and  music  across  the  sea 

and  the  opening  line  of  the  poem, 

Before  him" the  immeasurable  heaven, 

cause  us  to  think  that  Lord  de  Tabley  has 
paid  but  little  attention  to  the  question  of 
elision  in  English  poetry.  In  the  second  of 
the  lines  above  quoted  elision  is  impossible, 
in  the  first  elision  is  demanded.  The  reason 
why  elision  is  sometimes  demanded  is  that  in 
certain  lines,  as  in  the  one  which  opens  '  Orpheus 
in  Hades,'  the  hiatus  which  occurs  when  a  word 
ending  with  a  vowel  is  followed  by  a  vowel 
beginning  the  next  word  may  be  so  great  as  to 


LORD  DE  TABLEY  237 

become  intolerable.    The  reason  why  elision  is 
sometimes  a  merely  allowable  beauty  is  that 
when  a  word  ends  with  w,  r,  or  /,  to  elide  the 
liquids  is  to  secure  a  kind  of  billowy  music  of 
a  peculiarly   delightful   kind.     Now   elision   is 
very  specially   demanded   in   a  line  like  that 
which  opens  '  Orpheus  in  Hades,'  where  the 
pause  of  the  line  fall  upon  the.    To  make  the 
'main  pause  of  the  line  fall  upon  the  is  extremely 
and  painfully  bad,  even  when  the  next  word 
begins  with  a  consonant ;    but  when  the  word 
following  the  begins  with  a  vowel,  the  line  is 
absoltuely  immetrical ;   it  has,  indeed,  no  more 
to  do  with  English  prosody  than  with  that 
prosody  of  Japan  upon  which  Mr.  Basil  Cham- 
berlain discourses  so  pleasantly.     On  the  other 
hand,  the  elision  of  the  second  syllable  of  the 
word  music  in  the  other  line  quoted  above  is 
equally  faulty  in  another  direction.     But   as 
we  said  when  reviewing  Mr.  Bridges's  treatise 
on  Milton's  prosody,  nothing  is  more  striking 
than  the  helplessness  of  most  recent  poets  when 
confronted  with  the  simple  question  of  elision. 
In  an  '  Ode  to  a  Star '  there  is  great  beauty 
and  breadth  of  thought  and  expression.     Its 
only  structural  blemish,   that   of  an   opening 
stanza  whose  form  is  not  distinctly  followed, 
can  be  so  easily  put  right  that  it  need  only  be 
mentioned  here  in  order  to  emphasize  the  canon 
that  it  is  only  in  irregular  odes  that  variation 
of  stanza  is  permissible.     Keats,  no  doubt,  in 


238  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

one  at  least  of  his  unequalled  odes,  does  depart 
from  the  scheme  of  structure  indicated  by  the 
opening  stanza,  and  without  any  apparent 
metrical  need  for  so  doing.  But  the  poem  does 
not  gain  by  the  departure.  Besides,  Keats  is 
now  a  classic,  and  has  a  freedom  in  regard  to 
irregularities  of  metre  which  Lord  de  Tabley 
would  be  the  last  to  claim  for  himself.  Another 
blemish  of  a  minor  kind  in  the  '  Ode  to  a  Star  ' 
is  that  of  rhyming  "  meteor  "  with  "  wheatear." 
If  the  poetry  in  Lord  de  Tabley 's  volume 
answers  as  little  to  Milton's  famous  list  of  the 
poetic  requirements,  "  simple,  sensuous,  and 
passionate,"  as  does  Milton's  own  poetry,  which 
answers  to  only  the  second  of  these  demands, 
very  high  poetry  might  be  cited  which  is  neither 
sensuous  nor  passionate.  The  so-called  coldness 
displayed  by  '  Lycidas '  arises  not,  it  may  well 
be  supposed,  from  any  lack  on  Milton's  part  of 
sorrow  for  his  friend,  but  from  his  determination 
that  simple  he  would  not  be,  and  yet  his  method 
is  justified  of  its  own  beauty  and  glory.  Of 
course  poetry  may  be  too  ornate,  but  in  de- 
manding a  simplicity  of  utterance  from  the  poet 
it  is  easy  for  the  critic  to  forget  how  wide  and 
how  various  are  poetry's  domains.  For  if  in 
one  mood  poetry  is  the  simple  and  unadorned 
expression  of  nature,  in  another  it  is  the  woof 
of  art, 

Innumerable  of  stains  and  splendid  dyes 

As  are  the  tiger-moth's  deep-damasked  wings. 


LORD  DE  TABLEY  239 

In  the  matter  of  poetic  ornament,  all  that 
the  reader  has  any  right  to  demand  is  that  the 
decoration  should  be  poetical  and  not  rhetorical. 
Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  surer  sign 
of  the  amount  of  the  poetical  endowment  of 
any  poet  than  the  insight  he  shows  into  the 
nature  of  poetry  as  distinguished  from  rhetoric 
when  working  on  ornate  poetry.  It  is  a  serious 
impeachment  of  latter-day  criticism  that  in  very 
many  cases,  perhaps  in  most  cases,  the  plaudits 
given  to  the  last  new  "  leading  poet "  of  the  hour 
are  awarded  to  "  felicitous  lines,"  every  felicity 
of  which  is  rhetorical  and  not  poetical. 


VII. 

WILLIAM   MORRIS. 
1834-1896. 

I. 

THE   news   of    the   grave   turn   suddenly 
taken  by  William   Morris's   illness  pre- 
pared the  public  for    the    still   worse 
news  that  was  to  follow. 

The  certificate  of  the  immediate  cause  of 
death  affirms  it  to  have  been  phthisis,  but  one 
would  suppose  that  almost  every  vital  organ 
had  become  exhausted.  Each  time  that  I 
saw  him  he  declared,  in  answer  to  my  inquiries, 
that  he  suffered  no  pain  whatever.  And  a 
comforting  thought  this  is  to  us  all — that 
Morris  suffered  no  pain.  To  Death  himself  we 
may  easily  be  reconciled — nay,  we  might  even 
look  upon  him  as  Nature's  final  beneficence  to 
all  her  children,  if  it  were  not  for  the  cruel 
means  he  so  often  employs  in  fulfilling  his 
inevitable  mission.  The  thought  that  Morris's 
life  had  ended  in  the  tragedy  of  pain — the 
thought  that  he  to  whom  work  was  sport 
and  generosity  the  highest  form  of  enjoyment, 
suffered  what  some  men  suffer  in  shuffling  off 

240 


WILLIAM    MORRIS 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  241 

the  mortal  coil — would  have  been  intolerable 
almost.  For  among  the  thousand  and  one 
charms  of  the  man,  this,  perhaps,  was  the  chief, 
that  Nature  had  endowed  him  with  an  enormous 
capacity  of  enjoyment,  and  that  Circumstance, 
conspiring  with  Nature,  said  to  him,  "  Enjoy." 
Born  in  easy  circumstances,  though  not  to 
the  degrading  trouble  of  wealth — cherishing  as 
his  sweetest  possessions  a  devoted  wife  and 
two  daughters,  each  of  them  endowed  with 
intelligence  so  rare  as  to  understand  a  genius 
such  as  his — surrounded  by  friends,  some  of 
whom  were  among  the  first  men  of  our  time, 
and  most  of  whom  were  of  the  very  salt  of  the 
earth — it  may  be  said  of  him  that  Misfortune, 
if  she  touched  him  at  all,  never  struck  home. 
If  it  is  true,  as  Merime"e  affirms,  that  men  are 
hastened  to  maturity  by  misfortune,  who 
wanted  Morris  to  be  mature  ?  Who  wanted 
him  to  be  other  than  the  radiant  boy  of  genius 
that  he  remained  till  the  years  had  silvered 
his  hair  and  carved  wrinkles  on  his  brow,  but 
left  his  blue-grey  eyes  as  bright  as  when  they 
first  opened  on  the  world  ?  Enough  for  us  to 
think  that  the  man  must,  indeed,  be  specially 
beloved  by  the  gods  who  in  his  sixty-third  year 
dies  young.  Old  age  Morris  could  not  have 
borne  with  patience.  Pain  would  not  have 
developed  him  into  a  hero.  This  beloved  man, 
who  must  have  died  some  day,  died  when  his 
marvellous  powers  were  at  their  best — and  died 


242  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

without  pain.  The  scheme  of  life  and  death 
does  not  seem  so  much  awry,  after  all. 

At  the  last  interview  but  one  that  ever  I  had 
with  him — it  was  in  the  little  carpetless  room 
from  which  so  much  of  his  best  work  was 
turned  out — he  himself  surprised  me  by  lead- 
ing the  conversation  upon  a  subject  he  rarely 
chose  to  talk  about — the  mystery  of  life  and 
death.  The  conversation  ended  with  these 
words  of  his :  "I  have  enjoyed  my  life — few 
men  more  so — and  death  in  any  case  is  sure." 

It  is  difficult  not  to  think  that  the  cause  of 
causes  of  his  death  was  excessive  exercise  of  all 
his  forces,  especially  of  the  imaginative  faculty. 
When  I  talked  to  him,  as  I  often  did,  of  the  peril 
of  such  a  life  of  tension  as  his,  he  pooh-poohed 
the  idea.  "  Look  at  Gladstone,"  he  would 
say  ;  "  look  at  those  wise  owls  your  chancellors 
and  your  judges.  Don't  they  live  all  the  longer 
for  work  ?  It  is  rust  that  kills  men,  not  work." 
No  doubt  he  was  right  in  contending  that  in 
intellectual  efforts  such  as  those  he  alluded  to, 
where  the  only  faculty  drawn  upon  is  the  "  dry 
light  of  intelligence,"  a  prodigious  amount  of 
work  may  be  achieved  without  any  sapping  of 
the  sources  of  life.  But  is  this  so  where  that 
fusion  of  all  the  faculties  which  we  call  genius 
is  greatly  taxed  ?  I  doubt  it.  In  all  true 
imaginative  production  there  is,  as  De  Quincey 
pointed  out  many  years  ago,  a  movement  not 
of  "  the  thinking  machine  "  only,  but  of  the 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  243 

whole  man — the  whole  "  genial "  nature  of  the 
worker — his  imagination,  his  judgment,  moving 
in  an  evolution  of  lightning  velocity  from  the 
whole  of  the  work  to  the  part,  from  the  part  to 
the  whole,  together  with  every  emotion  of  the 
soul.  Hence  when,  as  in  the  case  of  Walter 
Scott,  of  Charles  Dickens,  and  presumably  of 
Shakespeare  too,  the  emotional  nature  of  Man 
is  overtaxed,  every  part  of  the  frame  suffers, 
and  cries  out  in  vain  for  its  share  of  that  nervous 
fluid  which  is  the  true  vis  vitce. 

We  have  only  to  consider  the  sort  of  work 
Morris  produced  and  its  amount  to  realize  that 
no  human  powers  could  continue  to  withstand 
such  a  strain.  Many  are  of  opinion  that  '  The 
Lovers  of  Gudrun '  is  his  finest  poem ;  he 
worked  at  it  from  four  o'clock  in  the  morning 
till  four  in  the  afternoon,  and  when  he  rose 
from  the  table  he  had  produced  750  lines  ! 
Think  of  the  forces  at  work  in  producing  a 
poem  like  '  Sigurd.'  Think  of  the  mingling  of 
the  drudgery  of  the  Dryasdust  with  the  move- 
ments of  an  imaginative  vision  unsurpassed 
in  our  time  ;  think,  I  say,  of  the  collaborating 
of  the  '  Volsunga  Saga '  with  the  '  Nibelungen- 
lied,'  the  choosing  of  this  point  from  the  Saga- 
man,  and  of  that  point  from  the  later  poem  of 
the  Germans,  and  then  fusing  the  whole  by 
imaginative  heat  into  the  greatest  epic  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Was  there  not  work 
enough  here  for  a  considerable  portion  of  a 


244  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

poet's  life  ?  And  yet  so  great  is  the  entire  mass 
of  his  work  that  '  Sigurd '  is  positively  over- 
looked in  many  of  the  notices  of  his  writings 
which  have  appeared  since  his  death  in  the 
press,  while  in  the  others  it  is  alluded  to  in 
three  words,  and  this  simply  because  the  mass 
of  other  matter  to  be  dealt  with  fills  up  all  the 
available  space  of  a  newspaper. 

Then,  again,  take  his  translation  of  the 
Odyssey.  Some  competent  critics  are  dis- 
satisfied with  this  ;  yet  in  a  certain  sense  it  is  a 
triumph.  The  two  specially  Homeric  qualities 
— those,  indeed,  which  set  Homer  apart  from 
all  other  poets — are  eagerness  and  dignity. 
Never  again  can  they  be  fully  combined,  for 
never  again  will  poetry  be  written  in  the  Greek 
hexameters  and  by  a  Homer.  That  Tennyson 
could  have  given  us  the  Homeric  dignity  his 
magnificent  rendering  of  a  famous  fragment  of 
the  Iliad  showrs.  Chapman's  translations  show 
that  the  eagerness  also  can  be  caught.  Morris, 
of  course,  could  not  have  given  the  dignity  of 
Homer,  but  then,  while  Tennyson  has  left  us 
only  a  few  lines  speaking  with  the  dignity  of 
the  Iliad,  Morris  gave  us  a  translation  of  the 
entire  Odyssey,  which,  though  it  missed  the 
Homeric  dignity,  secured  the  eagerness  as 
completely  as  Chapman's  free-and-easy  para- 
phrase, and  in  a  rendering  as  literal  as  Buckley's 
prose  crib,  which  lay  frankly  by  Morris's  side 
as  he  wrote. 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  245 

This,  with  his  much  less  satisfactory  trans- 
lation of  Virgil,  where  he  gives  us  an  almost 
word-for-word  translation,  and  yet  throws 
over  the  poem  a  glamour  of  romance  which 
brings  Virgil  into  the  sympathy  of  the 
modern  reader,  would  have  occupied  years 
with  almost  any  other  poet.  But  these  two 
efforts  of  his  genius  are  swamped  by  the  purely 
original  poems,  such  as  '  The  Defence  of 
Guenevere,'  '  Jason/  '  The  Earthly  Paradise,' 
'  Love  is  Enough,'  '  Poems  by  the  Way,'  &c. 
And  then  come  his  translations  from  the  Ice- 
landic. Mere  translation  is,  of  course,  easy 
enough,  but  not  such  translation  as  that  in  the 
"  Saga  Library."  Allowing  for  all  the  aid  he  got 
from  Mr.  Magnusson,  what  a  work  this  is  ! 
Think  of  the  imaginative  exercise  required  to 
turn  the  language  of  these  Saga-men  into  a 
diction  so  picturesque  and  so  concrete  as  to 
make  each  Saga  an  English  poem,  for  poem 
each  one  is,  if  Aristotle  is  right  in  thinking  that 
imaginative  substance  and  not  metre  is  the 
first  requisite  of  a  poem. 

And  this  brings  me  to  those  poems  without 
metre  which  he  invented  for  himself  in  the 
latter  portion  of  his  career.  There  is  in  these 
delightful  stories,  leaving  out  of  consideration 
the  exquisite  lyrics  interspersed,  enough  poetic 
wealth  adequately  to  endow  a  dozen  poets. 
The  last  of  all  of  them — the  one  of  which  the 
last  two  chapters,  when  he  could  no  longer 


246  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

hold  a  pen,  he  dictated  to  his  friend  Mr.  Cock- 
erell,  in  the  determination,  as  he  said  to  me, 
that  he  would  finish  it  before  he  died — will  be 
found  to  be  finer  than  any  hitherto  published. 
It  is  called  '  The  Sundering  Flood/  and  was 
written  after  the  story  '  The  Water  of  the 
Wondrous  Isles/  It  ('  The  Sundering  Flood  ') 
is  as  long  as  '  The  Wood  beyond  the  World/ 
but  has  lyrics  interspersed. 

But  evidently  it  is  as  an  inventor  in  the  fine 
arts  that  he  is  chiefly  known  to  the  general 
public.  "  Had  he  written  no  poetry  at  all,  he 
would  have  been  as  famous/'  we  are  told,  "  as 
he  is  now."  Anyhow,  there  is  no  household 
of  any  culture  among  the  English-speaking 
races  in  which  the  name  of  William  Morris 
does  not  at  once  call  up  that  great  revival  in 
decorative  art  for  which  the  latter  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century  will  be  famous.  In  his 
designs  for  tapestry  and  other  textures,  in  his 
designs  for  wall-papers  and  furniture,  there  is 
an  expenditure  of  imaginative  force  which  alone 
might  make  the  fame  of  an  artist.  Then  his 
artistic  printing,  in  which  he  invented  his  own 
decorations,  his  own  type,  and  his  own  paper — 
think  of  the  energy  he  put  into  all  that !  The 
moment  that  this  new  interest  seized  him  he 
made  a  more  thorough  study  of  the  various 
specimens  of  black-letter  printing  than  had 
ever  been  made  before  save  by  specialists. 
But  even  this  could  not  "  fatigue  an  appetite  " 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  247 

for  the  joy  of  work  "  which  was  insatiable." 
He  started  as  an  apostle  of  Socialism.  He 
edited  The  Commonweal,  and  wrote  largely  in 
it,  sank  money  in  it  week  by  week  with  the 
greatest  glee,  stumped  the  country  as  a  Socialist 
orator,  and  into  that  cause  alone  put  the  energy 
of  three  men.  Is  it  any  wonder,  then,  that 
those  who  loved  him  were  appalled  at  this 
prodigious  output  ?  Often  and  often  have  I 
tried  to  bring  this  matter  before  him.  It  was 
all  of  no  use.  "  For  me  to  rest  from  work," 
he  would  say,  "  means  to  die." 

When  not  absorbed  in  some  occupation  that 
he  loved — and  in  no  other  would  he  move — 
his  restlessness  was  that  of  a  young  animal. 
In  conversation  he  could  rarely  sit  still  for  ten 
consecutive  minutes,  but  must  needs  spring 
from  his  seat  and  walk  round  the  room,  as  if 
every  limb  were  eager  to  take  part  in  the  talk. 
His  boisterous  restlessness  was  the  first  thing 
that  struck  strangers.  During  the  period  when 
the  famous  partnership  of  Morris,  Marshall, 
Faulkner  &  Co.  was  being  dissolved  I  saw  him 
very  frequently  at  Queen's  Square,  for  I  took 
a  very  active  part  in  the  arrangement  of  that 
matter,  and  after  our  interviews  at  Queen 
Square  he  and  I  used  often  to  lunch  together 
at  the  "  Cock  "  in  Fleet  Street.  He  liked  a 
sanded  floor  and  quaint  old-fashioned  settles. 
Moreover,  the  chops  were  the  finest  to  be  had 
in  London. 


248  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

On  the  day  following  our  first  forgathering 
at  the  "  Cock,"  I  was  lunching  there  with 
another  poet — a  friend  of  his — when  the  waiter, 
who  knew  me  well,  said,  "  That  was  a  loudish 
gent  a-lunching  with  you  yesterday,  sir.  I 
thought  once  you  was  a-coming  to  blows." 
Morris  had  merely  been  declaiming  against  the 
Elizabethan  dramatists,  especially  Cyril  Tour- 
neur.  He  shouted  out,  "  You  ought  to  know 
better  than  to  claim  any  merit  for  such  work 
as  '  The  Atheist's  Tragedy  '  "  ;  and  wound  up 
with  the  generalization  that  "  the  use  of  blank 
verse  as  a  poetic  medium  ought  to  be  stopped 
by  Act  of  Parliament  for  at  least  two  genera- 
tions." On  another  occasion,  when  Middleton 
(another  fine  spirit,  who  "  should  have  died 
hereafter  ")  and  I  were  staying  witih  him  at 
Kelmscott  Manor,  the  passionate  emphasis  with 
which  he  declared  that  the  curse  of  mankind 
was  civilization,  and  that  Australia  ought  to 
have  been  left  to  the  blacks,  New  Zealand  to 
the  Maoris,  and  South  Africa  to  the  Kaffirs, 
startled  even  Middleton,  who  knew  him  so  well. 

It  was  this  boisterous  energy  and  infinite 
enjoyment  of  life  which  made  it  so  difficult  for 
people  on  meeting  him  for  the  first  time  to 
associate  him  with  the  sweet  sadness  of  '  The 
Earthly  Paradise.'  How  could  a  man  of  such 
exuberant  animal  spirits  as  Morris — so  hearty, 
so  noisy  often,  and  often  so  humorous — have 
written  those  lovely  poems,  whose  only  fault 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  249 

was  an  occasional  languor  and  a  lack  of  humour 
often  commented  on  when  the  critic  compares 
him  with  Chaucer  ?  This  subject  of  Chaucer's 
humour  and  Morris's  lack  of  it  demands,  how- 
ever, a  special  word  even  in  so  brief  a 
notice  as  this.  No  man  of  our  time — not  even 
Rossetti — had  a  finer  appreciation  of  humour 
than  Morris,  as  is  well  known  to  those  who  heard 
him  read  aloud  the  famous  "  Rainbow  Scene  " 
in  '  Silas  Marner '  and  certain  passages  in 
Charles  Dickens 's  novels.  These  readings  were 
as  fine  as  Rossetti's  recitations  of  '  Jim  Bludso  ' 
and  other  specimens  of  Yankee  humour.  And 
yet  it  is  a  common  remark,  and  one  that  cannot 
be  gainsaid,  that  there  is  no  spark  of  humour 
in  the  published  poems  of  either  of  these  two 
friends.  Did  it  never  occur  to  any  critic  to 
ask  whether  the  anomaly  was  not  explicable 
by  some  theory  of  poetic  art  that  they  held 
in  common  ?  It  is  no  disparagement  to  say  of 
Morris  that  when  he  began  to  write  poetry  the 
influence  of  Rossetti's  canons  of  criticism  upon 
him  was  enormous,  notwithstanding  the  influ- 
ence upon  him  of  Browning's  dramatic  methods. 
But  while  Rossetti's  admiration  of  Browning 
was  very  strong,  it  was  a  canon  of  his  criticism 
that  humour  was,  if  not  out  of  place  in  poetry, 
a  disturbing  element  of  it. 

What  makes  me  think  that  Morris  was  greatly 
influenced  by  this  canon  is  the  fact  that  Morris 
could  and  did  write  humorous  poetry,  and  then 


250  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

withheld  it  from  publication.  For  the  splendid 
poem  of  '  Sir  Peter  Harpdon's  End,'  printed  in 
his  first  volume,  Morris  wrote  a  humorous  scene 
of  the  highest  order,  in  which  the  hero  said  to 
his  faithful  fellow  captive  and  follower  John 
Curzon  that  as  their  deaths  were  so  near  he 
felt  a  sudden  interest  in  what  had  never  inter- 
ested him  before — the  story  of  John's  life 
before  they  had  been  brought  so  close  to  each 
other.  The  heroic  but  dull-witted  soldier  ac- 
ceded to  his  master's  request,  and  the  incoherent, 
muddle-headed  way  in  which  he  gave  his  auto- 
biography was  full  of  a  dramatic  and  subtle 
humour — was  almost  worthy  of  him  who  in 
three  or  four  words  created  the  foolish  fat 
scullion  in  '  Tristram  Shandy.'  This  he  refused 
to  print,  in  deference,  I  suspect,  to  a  theory  of 
poetic  art. 

In  criticizing  Morris,  however,  the  critic  is 
apt  to  forget  that  among  poets  there  are  those 
who,  treating  poetry  simply  as  an  art,  do  not 
press  into  their  work  any  more  of  their  own 
individual  forces  than  the  work  artistically 
demands,  while  another  class  of  poets  are  im- 
pelled to  give  full  expression  to  themselves  in 
every  poem  they  write.  It  is  to  the  former 
class  of  poets  that  Morris  belongs. 

Whatever  chanced  to  be  Morris's  goal  of  the 
moment  was  pursued  by  him  with  as  much 
intensity  as  though  the  universe  contained  no 
other  possible  goal,  and  then,  when  the  moment 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  251 

was  passed,  another  goal  received  all  his  atten- 
tion. I  was  never  more  struck  with  his  than 
on  the  memorable  day  when  I  first  met  "him,  and 
was  blessed  with  a  friendship  that  lasted  with- 
out interruption  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury. It  was  shortly  after  he  and  Rossetti 
entered  upon  the  joint  occupancy  of  Kelmscott 
Manor  on  the  Thames,  where  I  was  staying  as 
Rossetti's  guest.  On  a  certain  morning  when 
we  were  walking  in  the  fields  Rossetti  told  me 
that  Morris  was  coming  down  for  a  day's 
fishing  with  George  Hake,  and  that  "  Mouse," 
the  Icelandic  pony,  was  to  be  sent  to  the  Lech- 
lade  railway  station  to  meet  them.  "  You  are 
now  going  to  be  introduced  to  my  fellow 
partner,"  Rossetti  said.  At  that  time  I  only 
knew  of  the  famous  firm  by  name,  and  I  asked 
Rossetti  for  an  explanation,  which  he  gave  in 
his  usual  incisive  way. 

"  Well,"  said  he,  "  one  evening  a  lot  of  us 
were  together,  and  we  got  talking  about  the  way 
in  which  artists  did  all  kinds  of  things  in  olden 
times,  designed  every  kind  of  decoration  and 
most  kinds  of  furniture,  and  some  one  suggested 
— as  a  joke  more  than  anything  else — that  we 
should  each  put  down  five  pounds  and  form 
a  company.  Fivers  were  blossoms  of  a  rare 
growth  among  us  in  those  days,  and  I  won 't 
swear  that  the  table  bristled  with  fivers.  Any- 
how, the  firm  was  formed,  but  of  course  there 
was  no  deed  or  anything  of  that  kind.  In  fact, 


252  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

it  was  a  mere  playing  at  business,  and  Morris 
was  elected  manager,  not  because  we  ever 
dreamed  he  would  turn  out  a  man  of  business, 
but  because  he  was  the  only  one  among  us  who 
had  both  time  and  money  to  spare.  We  had  no 
idea  whatever  of  commercial  success,  but  it 
succeeded  almost  in  our  own  despite.  Here 
comes  the  manager.  You  must  mind  your 
p's  and  q's  with  him  ;  he  is  a  wonderfully 
stand-off  chap,  and  generally  manages  to  take 
against  people." 

"  What  is  he  like  ?  "  I  said. 

"  You  know  the  portraits  of  Francis  I.  Well, 
take  that  portrait  as  the  basis  of  what  you 
would  call  in  your  metaphysical  jargon  your 
'  mental  image '  of  the  manager's  face,  soften 
down  the  nose  a  bit,  and  give  him  the  rose- 
bloom  colour  of  an  English  farmer,  and  there 
you  have  him." 

"  What  about  Francis's  eyes  ?  "  I  said. 

"  Well,  they  are  not  quite  so  small,  but  not 
big — blue-grey,  but  full  of  genius." 

And  then  I  saw,  coming  towards  us  on  a 
rough  pony  so  diminutive  that  he  well  deserved 
the  name  of  "  Mouse,"  the  figure  of  a  man  in 
a  wideawake — a  figure  so  broad  and  square  that 
the  breeze  at  his  back,  soft  and  balmy  as  it  was, 
seemed  to  be  using  him  as  a  sail,  and  blowing 
both  him  and  the  pony  towards  us. 

When  Rossetti  introduced  me,  the  manager 
greeted  him  with  a  "  H'm  !  I  thought  you  were 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  253 

alone."  This  did  not  seem  promising.  Morris  at 
that  time  was  as  proverbial  for  his  exclusiveness 
as  he  afterwards  became  for  his  expansiveness. 

Rossetti,  however,  was  irresistible  to  every- 
body, and  especially  to  Morris,  who  saw  that 
he  was  expected  to  be  agreeable  to  me,  and  most 
agreeable  he  was,  though  for  at  least  an  hour  I 
could  still  see  the  shy  look  in  the  corner  of  his 
eyes.  He  invited  me  to  join  the  fishing,  which 
I  did.  Finding  every  faculty  of  Morris's  mind 
and  every  nerve  in  his  body  occupied  with  one 
subject,  fishing,  I  (coached  by  Rossetti,  who 
warned  me  not  to  talk  about  '  The  Defence  of 
Guenevere ')  talked  about  nothing  but  the 
bream,  roach,  dace,  and  gudgeon  I  used  to 
catch  as  a  boy  in  the  Ouse,  and  the  baits  that 
used  to  tempt  the  victims  to  their  doom.  Not 
one  word  passed  Morris's  lips,  as  far  as  I  re- 
member at  this  distance  of  time,  which  had  not 
some  relation  to  fish  and  baits.  He  had  come 
from  London  for  a  few  hours'  fishing,  and  all  the 
other  interests  which  as  soon  as  he  got  back  to 
Queen's  Square  would  be  absorbing  him  were 
forgotten.  Instead  of  watching  my  float,  I 
could  not  help  watching  his  face  with  an  amused 
interest  at  its  absorbed  expression,  which  after  a 
while  he  began  to  notice,  and  the  following  little 
dialogue  ensued,  which  I  remember  as  though  it 
took  place  yesterday  : — 

"  How  old  were  you  when  you  used  to  fish 
in  the  Ouse  ?  " 


254  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

"  Oh,  all  sorts  of  ages  ;  it  was  at  all  sorts  of 
times,  you  know." 

"  Well,  how  young  then  ?  " 

"  Say  ten  or  twelve." 

"  When  you  got  a  bite  at  ten  or  twelve,  did 
you  get  as  interested,  as  excited,  as  I  get  when 
I  see  my  float  bob  ?  " 

"  No." 

The  way  in  which  he  said,  "  I  thought  not/' 
conveyed  a  world  of  disparagement  of  me  as  a 
man  who  could  care  to  gaze  upon  a  brother 
angler  instead  of  upon  his  own  float. 


II. 

IN  whatsoever  William  Morris  does  or  says 
the  hand  or  the  voice  of  the  poet  is  seen 
or  heard :  in  his  house  decorations  no  less 
than  in  his  epics,  in  his  illuminated  manuscripts 
no  less  than  in  his  tapestries,  in  his  philippics 
against  "  restoration "  no  less  than  in  his 
sage-greens,  in  his  socialism  no  less  than  in 
his  samplers.  And  first  a  word  as  to  his 
poetry.  Any  critic  who,  having  for  contem- 
poraries such  writers  as  Tennyson,  Browning, 
Swinburne,  and  William  Morris,  fails  to  see  that 
he  lives  in  a  period  of  great  poets  may  rest 
assured  that  he  is  a  critic  born — may  rest 
assured  that  had  he  lived  in  the  days  of  the 
Elizabethans  he  would  have  joined  the  author 
of  '  The  Returne  from  Parnassus  '  in  despising 
the  unacademic  author  of  '  Hamlet '  and  '  Lear.' 
Among  this  band  of  great  contemporary  poets 
what  is  the  special  position  held  by  him  who, 
having  set  his  triumphant  hand  to  everything 
from  the  sampler  up  to  the  epic,  has  now, 
by  way  of  recreation,  or  rather  by  way  of 
opening  a  necessary  safety-valve  to  ease  his 
restless  energies,  invented  a  system  of  poetic 
socialism  and  expounded  it  in  a  brand-new 
kind  of  prose  fiction  ? 

255 


256  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

A  special  and  peculiar  position  Morris  holds 
among  his  peers — on  that  we  are  all  agreed ; 
but  what  is  that  position  ?  We  must  not  talk 
too  familiarly  about  the  Olympian  gods  ;  but 
is  it  that,  without  being  the  greatest  where 
all  are  great,  Morris  is  the  one  who  on  all  occa- 
sions produces  pure  poetry  and  nothing  else  ? 
Without  affirming  that  it  is  so,  we  may  at  least 
ask  the  question.  If  other  poets  of  our  time 
show  more  intellectual  strength  than  he,  are 
they,  perchance,  given  sometimes  to  adulterat- 
ing their  poetry  with  ratiocination  and  didactic 
preachments  such  as  were  better  left  to  the 
proseman  ?  Without  affirming  that  it  is  so, 
we  may  at  least  ask  the  question.  If  other 
poets  of  our  time  can  reach  a  finer  frenzy  than 
he  and  give  it  voice  with  a  more  melodious 
throat,  are  they,  perchance,  apt  to  forget  that 
"  eloquence  is  heard  while  poetry  is  overheard  "  ? 
Without  affirming  that  it  is  so,  we  may  at  least 
ask  the  question.  If  others,  again,  are  more 
picturesque  than  he  (though  these  it  might  be 
difficult  to  find),  are  they,  perchance,  a  little  too 
self-conscious  in  their  word-pictures,  and  are 
they,  perchance,  apt  to  pass  into  those  flowery 
but  uncertain  ways  that  were  first  discovered 
by  Euphues  ?  Without  affirming  that  it  is  so, 
we  may  at  least  ask  the  question. 

But  supposing  that  we  really  had  to  affirm  all 
these  things  about  the  other  Olympians,  where 
then  would  be  the  position  of  him  about  whose 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  257 

work  such  questions  could  not  even  be  asked  ? 
Where  would  then  be  the  place  of  him  who 
never  passes  into  ratiocination  or  rhetoric,  never 
passes  into  excessive  word-painting  or  into 
euphuism,  never  speaks  so  loud  as  to  be  heard 
rather  than  overheard,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
gives  us  always  clear  and  simple  pictures,  and 
always  in  musical  language  ?  Where  would 
then  be  the  place  of  him  who  is  the  very  ideal, 
if  not  of  the  poet  as  vates,  yet  of  the  poet  as 
"  maker  " — the  poet  who  always  looks  out 
upon  life  through  a  poetic  atmosphere  which, 
if  sometimes  more  attenuated  than  suits  some 
readers,  is  as  simple  and  as  clear  as  the  air  of 
a  May  morning  ?  A  question  which  would  be 
variously  answered  according  to  the  various 
temperaments  of  those  who  answer — of  those 
who  define  poetry  to  be  "  making,"  or  those 
who  define  it  to  be  "  prophesying,"  or  those  who 
define  it  to  be  "  singing." 

Exception  has,  no  doubt,  been  taken  to 
certain  archaisms  in  which  Morris  indulges  not 
only  in  the  epic  of  '  Sigurd/  but  also,  and  in 
a  greater  degree,  in  his  translations,  especially 
in  that  rendering  of  the  Odyssey.  It  is 
not  our  business  here  to  examine  into  the 
merits  and  demerits  of  Morris  as  a  translator ; 
but  if  it  were,  this  is  what  we  should  say  on  his 
behalf.  While  admitting  that  now  and  again 
his  diction  is  a  little  too  Scandinavian  to  be  in 
colour,  we  should  point  to  Matthew  Arnold's 

s 


258  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

dictum  that  in  a  versified  translation  a  poet  is 
no  longer  recognizable,  and  then  we  should  ask 
whether  it  is  given  to  any  man  in  any  kind 
of  diction  to  translate  Homer.  One  Homeric 
quality  only  can  any  one  translator  secure,  it 
seems  ;  and  if  he  can  secure  one,  is  not  his 
partial  failure  better  than  success  in  lesss 
ambitious  efforts  ?  To  Chapman  it  was  given 
to  secure  in  the  Iliad  a  measure  of  the  Homeric 
eagerness — but  what  else  ?  To  Tennyson  (in 
one  wonderful  fragment)  it  was  given  to  secure 
a  measure  of  the  Homeric  dignity  and  also  a 
measure  of  the  Homeric  picture — but  what  else  ? 
There  was  still  left  one  of  the  three  supreme 
Homeric  qualities — the  very  quality  which  no 
one  ever  supposed  could  be  secured  for  our 
literature,  or,  indeed,  for  any  other — Homer's 
quality  of  naif  wonder.  There  is  no  witchery 
of  Homer  so  fascinating  as  this ;  and  did  any 
one  suppose  that  it  could  ever  be  caught  by 
any  translator  ?  And  could  it  ever  have  been 
caught  had  not  Nature  in  one  of  her  happiest 
moods  bethought  herself  of  evolving,  in  a  late 
and  empty  day,  the  industrious  tapestry  weaver 
of  Merton  and  idle  singer  of  '  Sigurd/  '  The 
Earthly  Paradise,'  '  Love  is  Enough,'  and  ten 
thousand  delightful  verses  besides  ? 

But  can  a  writer  be  called  na'if  who  works  in 
a  diction  belonging  rather  to  a  past  age  than 
to  his  own  ?  Morris  has  proved  that  he  could. 
Imagination  is  the  basis  upon  which  all  other 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  259 

human  faculties  rest.  In  the  deep  sense,  in- 
deed, one  possession  only  have  we  "  fools  of 
nature,"  our  imagination.  What  we  fondly 
take  for  substance  is  the  very  shadow ;  what 
we  fondly  take  for  shadow  is  the  very  substance. 
And  day  by  day  is  Science  herself  endorsing 
more  emphatically  than  ever  Hamlet's  dictum, 
that  "  there  is  nothing  either  good  or  bad, 
but  thinking  makes  it  so."  By  the  aid  of 
imagination  our  souls  confront  the  present, 
and,  as  a  rule,  the  present  only.  But  Morris  is 
an  instance,  and  not  a  solitary  one,  of  a  modern 
writer's  inhaling  so  naturally  the  atmosphere  of 
the  particular  past  period  his  imagination 
delights  in  as  to  belong  spiritually  to  that 
period  rather  than  his  own.  To  deny  sincerity  of 
accent  to  Morris  because  of  his  love  of  the  simple 
old  Scandinavian  note — the  note  which  to  him 
represents  every  other  kind  of  primitive  sim- 
plicity— would  be  as  uncritical  as  to  deny 
sincerity  of  accent  to  Charles  Lamb  because  of 
his  sympathy  with  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean 
times,  or  to  Dante  Rossetti  because  of  his  sym- 
pathy with  the  period  of  his  great  Italian  name- 
sake. 

So  much  for  the  poetry  of  our  many-handed 
poet.  As  to  his  house  decorations,  his  illu- 
minated manuscripts,  his  "  anti-scrape  " 
philippics,  his  sage-greens,  his  tapestries,  his 
socialism,  and  his  samplers :  to  deal  with  the 
infinite  is  far  beyond  the  scope  of  an  article  so 


260  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

very  finite  as  this,  or  we  could  easily  show  that 
in  them  all  there  is  seen  the  same  naif  genius  of 
the  poet,  the  same  rare  instinct  for  beautiful 
expression,  the  same  originality  as  in  the  epics 
and  the  translations.  Let  him  who  is  rash 
enough  to  suppose  that  even  the  socialism  of  a 
great  poet  is  like  the  socialism  of  common  folk 
read  '  John  Ball/  Let  him  observe  how  like 
Titania  floating  and  dancing  and  playing  among 
the  Athenian  clowns  seems  the  Morrisian  genius 
floating  and  dancing  and  playing  among  the 
surroundings  in  which  at  present  it  pleases  him 
to  disport.  What  makes  the  ordinary  socialistic 
literature  to  many  people  unreadable  is  its  sour- 
ness. What  the  Socialists  say  may  be  true, 
but  their  way  of  saying  it  sets  one's  teeth  on 
edge.  They  contrive  to  state  their  case  with  so 
much  bitterness,  with  so  much  unfairness — so 
much  lack  of  logic — that  the  listener  says  at 
once,  "  For  me,  any  galley  but  this  !  Things  are 
bad ;  but,  for  Heaven's  sake,  let  us  go  on  as 
we  are !  " 

By  the  clever  competition  of  organisms 
did  Nature,  long  before  socialism  was  thought 
of,  contrive  to  build  up  a  world — this  make- 
shift world.  By  the  teeth  of  her  very  cats 
did  she  evolve  her  succulent  clover.  But 
whether  the  Socialists  are  therefore  wrong  in 
their  views  of  society  and  its  ultimate  goal  is 
not  a  question  we  need  discuss.  What  they 
want  is  more  knowledge  and  less  zeal.  It  is 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  261 

possible  to  see,  and  see  clearly,  that  the  social 
organism  is  far  from  being  what  it  ought  to  be, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  remember  that  man  is 
a  creature  of  slow  growth,  and  that  even  in 
reaching  his  present  modest  stage  of  develop- 
ment the  time  he  required  was  long — long 
indeed  unless  we  consider  his  history  in  relation 
to  the  history  of  the  earth,  and  then  he  appears 
to  have  been  very  commendably  expeditious. 
If  there  is  any  truth  in  what  the  geologists  tell 
us  of  the  vast  age  of  the  earth,  it  seems  only  a 
few  years  ago  that  man  succeeded,  after  much 
heroic  sitting  down,  in  wearing  off  an  appendage 
which  had  done  him  good  service  in  his  early 
tree-climbing  days,  but  which,  with  new  environ- 
ments and  with  trousers  in  prospect,  had  ceased 
to  be  useful  or  ornamental.  An  anthropoid 
Socialist  would  have  advised  him  to  "  cut  it 
off,"  and  had  he  done  so  he  would  have  bled  to 
death. 

That  among  all  her  children  Man  is  really 
Nature's  prime  favourite  seems  pretty  evident, 
though  no  one  can  say  why.  It  is  to  him  that 
the  Great  Mother  is  ever  pointing  and  saying, 
"  A  poor  creature,  but  mine  own.  I  shall  do 
something  with  him  some  day,  but  I  must  not 
try  to  force  him."  Here,  indeed,  is  the  mistake 
of  the  Socialists.  They  think  they  can  force 
the  very  creature  who  above  all  others  cannot 
be  forced.  They  think  they  can  turn  him  into 
something  rich  and  strange — turn  him  in  a 


262  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

single  generation — even  as  certain  ingenious 
experimentalists  turned  what  Nature  meant  for 
a  land-salamander  into  a  water-salamander, 
with  new  rudder-tail  and  gills  instead  of  lungs 
and  feet  suppressed,  by  feeding  him  with  water 
animals  in  oxygenated  water  and  cajoling  his 
functions.  Competition,  that  evolved  Shake- 
speare from  an  ascidian,  may  be  a  mistake  of 
Nature's — M.  Arsene  Houssaye  declares  that 
she  never  was  so  wise  and  artistically  perfect 
as  we  take  her  to  be — but  her  mistakes  are  too 
old  to  be  rectified  in  a  single  generation.  A 
little  more  knowledge,  we  say,  and  a  little  less 
zeal  would  save  the  Socialist  from  being  con- 
sidered by  the  advanced  thinker — who,  study- 
ing the  present  by  the  light  of  the  past,  sees  that 
all  civilization  is  provisional — as  the  most 
serious  obstructive  whom  he  has  to  encounter. 

As  to  Morris,  we  have  always  felt  that,  take 
him  all  round,  he  is  the  richest  and  most  varied 
in  artistic  endowments  of  any  man  of  our  time. 
On  whichsoever  of  the  fine  arts  he  had  chanced 
to  concentrate  his  gifts  and  energies  the  result 
would  have  been  the  same  as  in  poetry.  In  the 
front  rank  he  would  always  have  been.  But 
it  is  not  until  we  come  to  deal  with  his  socialism 
that  we  see  how  entirely  aestheticism  is  the 
primal  source  from  which  all  his  energies 
spring.  That  he  has  a  great  and  generous 
heart — a  heart  that  must  needs  sympathize  with 
every  form  of  distress — no  one  can  doubt  who 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  263 

reads  these  two  books,*  and  yet  his  socialism 
comes  from  an  entirely  aesthetic  impulse.  It 
is  the  vulgarities  of  civilization,  it  is  the  ugliness 
of  contemporary  life — so  unlike  that  Earthly 
Paradise  of  the  poetic  dream — that  have  driven 
him  from  his  natural  and  proper  work.  He 
cannot  take  offence  at  our  saying  this,  for  he 
has  said  it  himself  in  '  Signs  of  Change '  : — 

"  As  I  strove  to  stir  up  people  to  this  reform, 
I  found  that  the  causes  of  the  vulgarities  of 
civilization  lay  deeper  than  I  had  thought,  and 
little  by  little  I  was  driven  to  the  conclusion 
that  all  these  uglinesses  are  but  the  outward 
expression  of  the  innate  moral  baseness  into 
which  we  are  forced  by  our  present  form  of 
society,  and  that  it  is  futile  to  attempt  to  deal 
with  them  from  the  outside.  Whatever  I  have 
written,  or  spoken  on  the  platform,  on  these 
social  subjects  is  the  result  of  the  truths  of 
socialism  meeting  my  earlier  impulse,  and  giving 
it  a  definite  and  much  more  serious  aim  ;  and 
I  can  only  hope,  in  conclusion,  that  any  of 
my  readers  who  have  found  themselves  hard- 
pressed  by  the  sordidness  of  civilization,  and 
have  not  known  where  to  turn  to  for  encourage- 
ment, may  receive  the  same  enlightenment  as 
I  have,  and  that  even  the  rough  pieces  in  this 
book  may  help  them  to  that  end." 

With  these  eloquent  words  no  one  can  more 
fully  agree  than  we  do,  so  far  as  they  relate 
to  the  unloveliness  of  Philistine  rule.  But 

*  '  A  Dream  of  John  Ball  and  a  King's  Lesson.'  '  Signs 
of  Change.' 


264  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

though  the  bad  features  of  the  present  time* 
are  peculiar  to  itself,  when  were  those  paradisal 
days  of  which  Morris  dreams  ?  when  did  that 
merry  England  exist  in  which  the  general  sum 
of  human  happiness  and  human  misery  was 
more  equally  distributed  than  now  ? 

Those  "  dark  ages  "  beloved  of  the  author 
of  '  John  Ball '  may  not  have  been  quite  so 
dark  as  Swinburne  declares  them  to  have  been  ; 
but  in  this  matter  of  the  equalization  of  human 
happiness  were  they  so  very  far  in  advance  of 
the  present  time  ?  Those  who  have  watched 
the  progress  of  Morris's  socialism  know  that, 
so  far  from  being  out  of  keeping  with  the  "  anti- 
scrape  "  philippics  and  the  tapestry  weaving,  it 
is  in  entire  harmony  with  them.  Out  of  a  noble 
anger  against  the  "  jerry  builder "  and  his 
detestable  doings  sprang  this  the  last  of  the 
Morrisian  epics,  as  out  of  the  wrath  of  Achilles 
sprang  the  Iliad.  That  the  picturesqueness  of 
the  John  Ball  period  should  lead  captive  the 
imagination  of  Morris  was,  of  course,  inevitable. 
Society  is  at  least  picturesque  wheresoever  the 
classes  are  so  sharply  demarcated  as  they  were 
in  the  dark  ages,  when  the  difference  as  to 
quality  of  flesh  and  blood  between  the  lord  and 
the  thrall  was  greater  than  the  difference  be- 
tween the  thrall  and  the  swine  he  tended.  But 
what  about  the  condition  of  this  same  pictur- 
esque thrall  who  (as  the  law  books  have  it) 

*  Written  in  1888. 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  265 

"  clothed  the  soil " — whose  every  chance  of 
happiness,  whose  every  chance  of  comfort, 
depended  upon  the  arbitrary  will  of  some 
more  or  less  brutal  lord  ?  What  was  the  con- 
dition of  the  English  lower  orders — the  orders 
for  whom  many  bitter  social  tears  are  now 
being  shed  ?  What  about  the  condition  of  the 
thralls  in  dark  ages  so  dark  that  even  an  apostle 
of  Wyclif's  (this  same  John  Ball,  Morris's  hero) 
preached  the  doctrine — unless  he  has  been 
belied — that  no  child  had  a  soul  that  could  be 
saved  who  had  been  born  out  of  wedlock  ?  The 
Persian  aphorism  that  warns  us  to  beware  of 
poets,  princes,  and  women  must  have  had  a 
satirical  reference  to  the  fact  that  their  govern- 
ance of  the  world  is  by  means  of  picturesqueness. 
Always  it  has  been  the  picturesqueness  of 
tyranny  that  has  kept  it  up.  It  was  the 
picturesqueness  of  the  auto  de  fe  that  kept  up 
the  Spanish  Inquisition,  but  we  may  rest 
assured  that  the  most  picturesque  actors  in  that 
striking  tableau  would  have  preferred  a  colour- 
less time  of  jerry  builders  to  a  picturesqueness 
like  that.  To  find  a  fourteenth-century  pot- 
house parlour  painted  by  a  modern  Socialist 
with  a  hand  more  loving  than  Walter  Scott's 
own  is  indeed  touching  : — 

"  I  entered  the  door  and  started  at  first  with 
my  old  astonishment,  with  which  I  had  woke 
up,  so  strange  and  beautiful  did  this  interior 
seem  to  me,  though  it  was  but  a  pothouse 


268  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

parlour.  A  quaintly  carved  sideboard  held 
an  array  of  bright  pewter  pots  and  dishes  and 
wooden  and  earthen  bowls ;  a  stout  oak  table 
went  up  and  down  the  room,  and  a  carved  oak 
chair  stood  by  the  chimney-corner,  now  filled 
by  a  very  old  man  dim-eyed  and  white-bearded. 
That,  except  the  rough  stools  and  benches  on 
which  the  company  sat,  was  all  the  furniture. 
The  walls  were  panelled  roughly  enough  with 
oak  boards  to  about  six  feet  from  the  floor,  and 
about  three  feet  of  plaster  above  that  was 
wrought  in  a  pattern  of  a  rose  stem  running  all 
round  the  room,  freely  and  roughly  done,  but 
with  (as  it  seemed  to  my  unused  eyes)  wonder- 
ful skill  and  spirit.  On  the  hood  of  the  great 
chimney  a  huge  rose  was  wrought  in  the  plaster 
and  brightly  painted  in  its  proper  colours. 
There  were  a  dozen  or  more  of  the  men  I  had 
seen  coming  along  the  street  sitting  there, 
some  eating  and  all  drinking  ;  their  cased  bows 
leaned  against  the  wall,  their  quivers  hung  on 
pegs  in  the  panelling,  and  in  a  corner  of  the 
room  I  saw  half  a  dozen  bill-hooks  that  looked 
made  more  for  war  than  for  hedge-shearing, 
with  ashen  handles  some  seven  foot  long. 
Three  or  four  children  were  running  about 
among  the  legs  of  the  men,  heeding  them  mighty 
little  in  their  bold  play,  and  the  men  seemed 
little  troubled  by  it,  although  they  were  talking 
earnestly  and  seriously  too.  A  well-made  comely 
girl  leaned  up  against  the  chimney  close  to  the 
gaffer's  chair,  and  seemed  to  be  in  waiting  on 
the  company  :  she  was  clad  in  a  close-fitting 
gown  of  bright  blue  cloth,  with  a  broad  silver 
girdle,  daintily  wrought,  round  her  loins,  a  rose 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  267 

wreath  was  on  her  head,  and  her  hair  hung 
down  unbound ;  the  gaffer  grumbled  a  few 
words  to  her  from  time  to  time,  so  that  I  judged 
he  was  her  grandfather." 

"  Morris's  '  Earthly  Paradise  '  \"  the  reader 
will  exclaim.  Yes ;  and  here  we  come  upon 
that  feature  of  originality  which,  as  has  been 
before  said,  distinguishes  Morris's  socialism 
from  the  socialism  of  the  prosaic  reformer. 

Political  opinions  almost  always  spring  from 
temperament.  The  conservative  temper  of  such 
a  poet  as  Sir  Walter  Scott  leads  him  to  idealize 
the  past,  and  to  concern  himself  but  little  about 
the  future.  The  rebellious  temperament  of 
such  a  poet  as  Shelley  leads  him  to  idealize  the 
future,  and  concern  himself  but  little  about 
the  past.  But  by  contriving  to  idealize  both 
the  past  and  the  future,  and  mixing  the  two 
idealizations  into  one  delicious  amalgam,  the 
poet  of  the  '  Earthly  Paradise  '  gives  us  the 
Morrisian  socialism,  the  most  charming,  and 
in  many  respects  the  most  marvellous  product 
of  "  the  poet's  mind  "  that  has  ever  yet  been 
presented  to  an  admiring  world. 

The  plan  of  '  John  Ball '  is  simplicity  itself. 
The  poet  in  a  dream  becomes  a  spectator  of  the 
insurrection  of  the  Kentish  men  at  the  time 
when  Wat  Tyler  rebelled  against  the  powers 
that  were  ;  and  the  hero,  John  Ball,  who  is 
mainly  famous  as  having  preached  a  sermon 
from  the  text 

Wan  Adam  dalf  and  Eve  span 
Wo  was  thanne  a  gentilman  ? 


268  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

is  made  to  listen  to  the  poet-dreamer's  prophecy 
of  the  days  of  bourgeois  rule  and  the  jerry 
builder. 

If  we  take  into  account  the  perfect  truth  and 
beauty  of  the  literary  form  in  which  the  story  is 
presented,  we  do  not  believe  that  anything  to 
surpass  it  could  be  found  in  historic  fiction  ; 
indeed,  we  do  not  know  that  anything  could 
be  found  to  equal  it.  The  difficulty  of  the  ima- 
ginative writer  who  attempts,  whether  in  prose 
or  verse,  to  vivify  the  past  seems  to  be  increas- 
ing, as  we  have  before  said,  every  day  with  the 
growth  of  the  scientific  temper  and  the  rever- 
ence of  the  sacredness  of  mere  documents.  <The 
old-fashioned  theory — the  theory  which  ob- 
tained from  Shakespeare's  time  down  to  Scott's 
and  even  down  to  Kingsley's — that  the  facts 
of  history  could  be  manipulated  for  artistic 
purposes  with  the  same  freedom  that  the 
artist's  own  inventions  can  be  handled,  gave 
the  artist  power  to  produce  vital  and  flexible 
work  at  the  expense  of  the  historic  conscience — 
a  power  which  is  being  curtailed  day  by  day. 
The  instinct  for  vivifying  by  imaginative  treat- 
ment the  records  of  the  past  is  too  universal  and 
too  deeply  inwoven  in  the  very  texture  of  the 
human  mind  to  be  other  than  a  true  and  healthy 
instinct.  But  so  oppressive  has  become  the 
tyranny  of  documents,  so  fettered  by  what  a 
humourist  has  called  "  factology  "  have  become 
the  wings  of  the  romancer's  imagination,  that 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  269 

one  wonders  at  his  courage  in  dealing  with 
historic  subjects  at  all. 

A  bold  writer  would  he  be  who  in  the  present 
day  should  make  Shakespeare  figure  among 
the  Kenilworth  festivities  as  a  famous  player 
(after  the  manner  of  Scott),  or  who  should 
(after  the  manner  of  Kingsley)  give  Elizabeth 
credit  for  Winter's  device  of  using  the  fire-ships 
before  Calais.  Even  the  poet — he  who,  dealing 
as  he  does  with  essential  and  elemental  qualities 
only,  is  not  so  hampered  as  the  proseman  in  these 
matters — is  beginning  also  to  feel  the  tyranny 
of  documents,  as  we  see  notably  in  Swinburne's 
'  Bothwell,'  which  consists  very  largely  of 
documents  transfigured  into  splendid  verse. 
But  more  than  even  this  :  the  mere  literary 
form  has  now  to  be  as  true  to  the  time  depicted 
as  circumstances  will  allow.  If  Scott's  romances 
have  a  fault  it  is  that,  as  he  had  no  command 
over,  and  perhaps  but  little  sympathy  with,  the 
beautiful  old  English  of  which  Morris  is  such  a 
master,  his  stories  lack  one  important  element 
of  dramatic  illusion.  But  it  is  in  the  literary 
form  of  his  story  that  Morris  is  especially  suc- 
cessful. Where  time  has  dealt  most  cruelly 
with  our  beloved  language  is  in  robbing  it  of 
that  beautiful  cadence  which  fell  from  our  fore- 
fathers' lips  as  sweetly  and  as  unconsciously  as 
melody  falls  from  the  throat  of  the  mavis.  One 
of  the  many  advantages  that  Morris  has  reaped 
from  his  peculiar  line  of  study  is  that  he  can 


2;o  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

write  like  this — he,  and  he  alone  among  living 
men  : — 

"  '  Surely  thou  goest  to  thy  death.'  He 
smiled  very  sweetly,  yet  proudly,  as  he  said  : 
'  Yea,  the  road  is  long,  but  the  end  cometh  at 
last.  Friend,  many  a  day  have  I  been  dying  ; 
for  my  sister,  with  whom  I  have  played  and 
been  merry  in  the  autumntide  about  the  edges 
of  the  stubble-fields  ;  and  we  gathered  the  nuts 
and  bramble-berries  there,  and  started  thence 
the  missel-thrush,  and  wondered  at  his  voice 
and  thought  him  big  ;  and  the  sparrow-hawk 
wheeled  and  turned  over  the  hedges,  and  the 
weasel  ran  across  the  path,  and  the  sound  of  the 
sheep-bells  came  to  us  from  the  downs  as  we 
sat  happy  on  the  grass  ;  and  she  is  dead  and 
gone  from  the  earth,  for  she  pined  from  famine 
after  the  years  of  the  great  sickness  ;  and  my 
brother  was  slain  in  the  French  wars,  and  none 
thanked  him  for  dying  save  he  that  stripped 
him  of  his  gear  ;  and  my  unwedded  wife  with 
whom  I  dwelt  in  love  after  I  had  taken  the 
tonsure,  and  all  men  said  she  was  good  and  fair, 
and  true  she  was  and  lovely  ;  she  also  is  dead 
and  gone  from  the  earth  ;  and  why  should  I 
abide  save  for  the  deeds  of  the  flesh  which 
must  be  done  ?  Truly,  friend,  this  is  but  an 
old  tale  that  men  must  die  ;  and  I  will  tell  thee 
another,  to  wit,  that  they  live  :  and  I  live  now 
and  shall  live.  Tell  me  then  what  shall  befall." 

Note  the  music  of  the  cadence  here — a  music 
that  plays  about  the  heart  more  sweetly  than 
any  verse,  save  the  very  highest.  And  here 
we  touch  upon  an  extremely  interesting  subject. 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  271 

Always  in  reading  a  prose  story  by  a  writer 
whose  energies  have  been  exercised  in  other 
departments  of  letters  there  is  for  the  critic 
a  special  interest.  If  this  exercise  has  been  in 
fields  outside  imaginative  literature — in  those 
fields  of  philosophical  speculation  where  a 
logical  method  and  a  scientific  modulation  of 
sentences  are  required — the  novelist,  instead  of 
presenting  us  with  those  concrete  pictures  of 
human  life  demanded  in  all  imaginative  art,  is 
apt  to  give  us  disquisitions  "  about  and  about  " 
human  life.  Forgetting  that  it  is  not  the 
function  of  any  art  to  prove,  he  is  apt  to  con- 
cern himself  deeply  in  showing  why  his  actors 
did  and  said  this  or  that — apt  to  busy  himself 
about  proving  his  story  either  by  subtle  analyses 
or  else  by  purely  scientific  generalizations,  in- 
stead of  attending  to  the  true  method  of  con- 
vincement  that  belongs  to  his  art — the  con- 
vincement  that  is  effected  by  actual  pictorial 
and  dramatic  illustration  of  how  his  actors 
really  did  the  things  and  said  the  things  vouched 
for  by  his  own  imagination.  That  the  quest 
of  a  scientific,  or  supposed  scientific,  basis  for 
a  novelist's  imaginative  structure  is  fatal  to 
true  art  is  seen  not  only  in  George  Eliot  and 
the  accomplished  author  of  '  Elsie  Venner,'  but 
also  in  writers  of  another  kind — writers  whose 
hands  cannot  possibly  have  been  stiffened  by 
their  knowledge  of  science. 

Among  the  many  instances  that  occur  to  us 


272  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

we  need  point  to  only  one,  that  of  a  story 
recently  published  by  one  of  our  most  successful 
living  novelists,  in  which  the  writer  endeavours 
to  prove  that  animal  magnetism  is  the  acting 
cause  of  spiritualistic  manifestations  so  called. 
Setting  out  to  show  that  a  medium  is  nothing 
more  than  a  powerful  mesmerist,  to  whose 
manipulations  all  but  two  in  a  certain  household 
are  unconsciously  succumbing,  he  soon  ignores 
for  plot  purposes  the  nature  of  the  dramatic 
situation  by  making  those  very  two  sceptics 
at  a  seance  hear  the  same  music,  see  the  same 
spiritually  conveyed  newspaper,  as  the  others 
hear  and  see.  That  the  writer  should  mistake, 
as  he  seems  to  do,  the  merely  directive  force  of 
magnetism  for  a  motive  force  does  not  concern 
the  literary  critic.  But  when  two  sceptics, 
who  are  to  expose  a  charlatan's  tricks  by 
watching  how  the  believers  are  succumbing  to 
mesmeric  hallucinations,  are  found  succumbing 
to  the  same  hallucinations  themselves — suc- 
cumbing because  the  story-teller  needs  them  as 
witnesses  of  the  phenomena — then  the  literary 
critic  grows  pensive,  for  he  sees  what  havoc 
the  scientific  method  will  work  in  the  flower- 
garden  of  art. 

On  the  other  hand,  should  the  story-teller 
be  a  poet — one  who,  like  the  writer  of  '  John 
Ball/  has  been  accustomed  to  write  under  the 
conditions  of  a  form  of  literary  art  where 
the  diction  is  always  and  necessarily  concrete, 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  273 

figurative,  and  quintessential,  and  where  the 
movement  is  metrical — his  danger  lies  in  a  very 
different  direction.  The  critic's  interest  then 
lies  in  watching  how  the  poet  will  comport  him- 
self in  another  field  of  imaginative  literature — 
a  field  where  no  such  conditions  as  these  exist 
— a  field  where  quintessential  and  concrete 
diction,  though  meritorious,  may  yet  be  carried 
too  far,  and  where  those  regular  and  expected 
bars  of  the  metricist  which  are  the  first  requisites 
of  verse  are  not  only  without  function,  but  are 
in  the  way — are  fatal,  indeed,  to  that  kind  of 
convincement  which,  and  which  alone,  is  the 
proper  quest  of  prose  art.  No  doubt  it  is  true, 
as  we  have  before  said,  that  literature  being 
nothing  but  the  reflex  of  the  life  of  man,  or  else 
of  the  life  of  nature,  the  final  quest  of  every 
form  of  literature  is  that  special  kind  of  con- 
vincement which  is  inherently  suitable  to  the 
special  form.  For  the  analogy  between  nature 
and  true  art  is  not  a  fanciful  one,  and  the  relation 
of  function  to  organism  is  the  same  in  both. 
But  what  is  the  difference  between  the  convince- 
ment achieved  by  poetic  and  the  convincement 
achieved  by  prose  art  ?  Is  it  that  the  convince- 
ment of  him  who  works  in  poetic  forms  is, 
though  not  necessarily,  yet  most  perfectly 
achieved  by  a  faithful  record  of  the  emotion 
aroused  in  his  own  soul  by  the  impact  upon  his 
senses  of  the  external  world,  while  the  con- 
vincement of  the  proseman  is,  though  not 


274  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

necessarily,  yet  most  perfectly  achieved  by  a 
faithful  record  and  picture  of  the  external 
world  itself  ? 

All  such  generalizations  as  this  are,  no  doubt, 
to  be  taken  with  many  and  great  qualifications  ; 
but,  roughly  speaking,  would  not  this  seem  to  be 
the  fundamental  difference  between  that  kind 
of  imaginative  literature  which  expresses  itself 
in  metrical  forms  and  that  kind  of  imaginative 
literature  in  which  metrical  form  is  replaced  by 
other  qualities  and  other  functions  ?  Not  but 
that  these  two  methods  may  meet  in  the  same 
work,  not  but  that  they  may  meet  and  strengthen 
each*other,vas  we  have  before  said  when  glancing 
at  the  interesting  question,  How  much,  or  how 
little,  of  realism  can  poetry  capture  from  the 
worlda"of  prose  and  weave  into  her  magic  woof, 
and  how  much  of  music  can  prose  steal  from 
poetry  ?  But  in  order  to  do  all  that  can  be 
done  in  the  way  of  enriching  poetry  with 
prose  material  without  missing  the  convince- 
ment  of  poetic  art,  the  poet  must  be  Homer 
himself ;  in  order  to  do  all  that  can  be  done  in 
the  way  of  vivifying  prose  fiction  with  poetic 
fire  without  missing  the  convincement  of  prose 
art,  the  story-teller  must  be  Charlotte  Bronte 
or  Emily,  her  sister,  in  whose  work  we  find  for 
once  the  quintessential  strength  and  the  con- 
crete and  figurative  diction  of  the  poet — indeed, 
all  the  poetical  requisites  save  metre  alone. 
Had  '  Jane  Eyre/  '  Villette,'  and  '  Wuthering 


WILLIAM   MORRIS  275 

Heights  '  existed  in  Coleridge's  time  he  would, 
we  may  be  sure,  have  taken  these  three  prose 
poems  as  illustrations  of  the  truth  of  his  axiom 
that  the  true  antithesis  of  poetry  is  not  prose, 
but  science. 

What  the  prose  poet  has  to  avoid  is  metrical 
movement  on  the  one  side  and  scientific  modula- 
tion of  sentences  on  the  other.  And  perhaps 
in  no  case  can  it  be  achieved  save  in  the  auto- 
biographic form  of  fiction,  where  and  where  alone 
the  work  is  so  subjective  that  it  may  bear  even 
the  poetic  glow  of  '  Jane  Eyre  '  and  '  Villette.' 
What  makes  us  think  this  to  be  so  is  the  fact 
that  in  '  Shirley ' — a  story  written  in  the  epic 
method — the  only  passages  of  the  poetic  kind 
which  really  convince  are  those  uttered  by  the 
characters  in  their  own  persons.  And  as  to 
'  Wuthering  Heights,'  a  story  which  could  not, 
of  course,  be  told  in  one  autobiography,  the 
method  of  telling  it  by  means  of  a  group  of 
autobiographies,  though  clumsy  enough  from 
the  constructor's  point,  was  yet  just  as  effective 
as  a  more  artistic  method.  And  it  was  true  in- 
stinct of  genius  that  led  Emily  Bronte  to  adopt 
the  autobiographic  method  even  under  these 
heavy  conditions. 

Still  the  general  truth  remains  that  the 
primary  function  of  the  poet  is  to  tell  his 
story  steeped  in  his  own  emotion,  while  the 
primary  function  of  the  prose  fictionist  is  to 
tell  his  story  in  an  objective  way.  Hence  it 


276  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

is  that  in  a  general  way  the  difficulty  of  the 
poet  who  turns  to  prose  fiction  lies,  like  that  of 
philosophical  or  scientific  writers,  in  suppressing 
certain  intellectual  functions  which  he  has  been 
in  the  habit  of  exercising.  And  the  case  of 
Scott,  which  at  first  sight  might  seem  to  show 
against  this  theory,  may  be  adduced  in  support 
of  it.  For  Scott's  versified  diction,  though 
concrete,  is  never  more  quintessential  than  that 
of  prose  ;  and  his  method  being  always  objective 
rather  than  subjective,  when  he  turned  to 
prose  fiction  he  seemed  at  once  to  be  writing 
with  his  right  hand  where  formerly  he  had 
been  writing  with  his  left. 


VIII. 
FRANCIS  HINDES   GROOME. 

(THE  TARNO  RYE.) 

1851-1902. 

i. 

I  HAVE  been  invited  to  write  about  my 
late  friend  and  colleague  Francis  Hindes 
Groome,  who  died  on  the  24th  ult.,  and  was 
buried  among  his  forefathers  at  Monk  Soham 
in  Suffolk.  I  find  the  task  extremely  difficult. 
Though  he  died  at  fifty,  he,  with  the  single 
exception  of  Borrow,  had  lived  more  than  any 
other  friend  of  mine,  and  perhaps  suffered  more. 
Indeed,  his  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  ,and 
romantic  literary  lives  that,  since  Sorrow's, 
have  been  lived  in  my  time. 

The  son  of  an  Archdeacon  of  Suffolk,  he 
was  born  hi  1851  at  Monk  Soham  Rectory, 
where,  I  believe,  his  father  and  his  grand- 
father were  born,  and  where  they  certainly 
lived ;  for — as  has  been  recorded  in  one  of 
the  invaluable  registry  books  of  my  friend 
Mr.  F.  A.  Crisp — he  belonged  to  one  of  the 
oldest  and  most  distinguished  families  in  Suf- 
folk. He  was  sent  early  to  Ipswich  School, 
where  he  was  a  very  popular  boy,  but  never 

277 


278          OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

strong  and  never  fond  of  athletic  exercises. 
His  early  taste  for  literature  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  with  his  boy  friend  Henry  Elliot 
Maiden  he  originated  a  school  imagazine  called 
the  Elizabethan.  Like  many  an  organ  origi- 
nated in  the  outer  world,  the  Elizabethan  failed 
because  it  would  not,  or  could  not,  bring  itself 
into  harmony  with  the  public  taste.  The 
boys  wanted  news  of  cricket  and  other  (games  : 
Groome  and  his  assistant  editor  gave  them 
literature  as  far  as  it  was  in  their  power  to 
do  so. 

The  Ipswich  School  was  a  very  good  one  for 
those  who  got  into  the  sixth,  as  Groome  did. 
The  head  master,  Dr.  Holden,  was  a  very  fine 
scholar ;  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  Groome 
throughout  his  life  showed  a  considerable  know- 
ledge of  and  interest  in  classical  literature. 
That  he  had  a  real  insight  into  the  structure  of 
Latin  verse  is  seen  by  a  rendering  of  Tennyson's 
'  Tithonus,'  which  Mr.  Maiden  has  been  so  very 
good  as  to  show  me — a  rendering  for  which  he 
got  a  prize.  In  1869  he  got  prizes  for  classical 
literature,  Latin  prose,  Latin  elegiacs,  and 
Latin  hexameters.  But  if  ;Dr.  Holden  exer- 
cised much  influence  over  Groome's  taste,  the 
assistant  master,  Mr.  Sanderson,  certainly  exer- 
cised more,  for  Mr.  Sanderson  was  an  enthu- 
siastic student  of  Romany.  The  influence  of 
the  assistant  master  was  soon  seen  after  Groome 
went  up  to  Oxford.  He  was  ploughed  for  his 


FRANCIS    HINDS    C.KOOME 


FRANCIS   HINDES   GROOME       279 

"  Smalls,"  and,  remaining  up  for  part  of  the 
"  Long,"  he  went  one  night  to  a  -fair  at  Oxford 
at  which  many  gipsies  were  present — an  inci- 
dent which  forms  an  important  part  of  his 
gipsy  story  '  Kriegspiel.'  Groome  at  once 
struck  up  an  acquaintance  with  the  gipsies  at 
the  fair.  It  occurred  also  that  Mr.  Sanderson, 
after  Groome  had  left  Ipswich  School,  used  to 
go  and  stay  at  Monk  Soham  Rectory  every 
summer  for  fishing ;  and  this  tended  to  focus 
Groome's  interest  in  Romany  matters.  At 
Gottingen,  where  he  afterwards  went,  he  found 
himself  in  a  kind  of  Romany  atmosphere,  for, 
owing  perhaps  to  Benfey's  having  been  a 
Gottingen  man,  Romany  matters  were  still 
somewhat  rife  there  in  certain  sets. 

The  period  from  his  leaving  Gottingen  to 
his  appearance  in  Edinburgh  in  1876  as  a  work- 
ing literary  man  of  amazing  activity,  intelli- 
gence, and  knowledge  is  the  period  that  he 
spent  among  the  gipsies.  And  it  is  this  very 
period  of  wild  adventure  and  romance  that  it  is 
impossible  for  me  to  dwell  upon  here.  But 
on  some  future  occasion  I  hope  to  write  some- 
thing about  his  adventures  as  a  Romany  Rye. 
His  first  work  was  on  the  '  Globe  Encyclo- 
paedia,' edited  by  Dr.  John  Ross.  Even  at  that 
time  he  was  very  delicate  and  subject  to  long 
wearisome  periods  of  illness.  During  his  work 
on  the  '  Globe  '  he  fell  seriously  ill  in  the 
middle  of  the  letter  S.  Things  were  going 


280  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

very  badly  with  him ;  but  they  would  have 
gone  much  worse  had  it  not  been  for  the 
affection  and  generosity  of  his  friend  and 
colleague  Prof.  H.  A.  Webster,  who,  in  order 
to  get  the  work  out  in  time,  sat  up  night 
after  night  in  Groome's  room,  writing  articles 
on  Sterne,  Voltaire,  and  other  subjects. 

Webster's  kindness,  and  afterwards  the  kind- 
ness of  Dr.  Patrick,  endeared  Edinburgh 
and  Scotland  to  the  "  Tarno  Rye."  As 
Webster  was  at  that  time  on  the  staff  of 
'  The  Encyclopaedia  Britannica/  I  think,  but 
I  do  not  know,  that  it  was  through  him  that 
Groome  got  the  commission  to  write  his  article 
'  Gypsies '  in  that  stupendous  work.  I  do  not 
know  whether  it  is  the  most  important,  but 
I  do  know  that  it  is  one  of  the  most  thorough 
and  conscientious  articles  in  the  entire  encyclo- 
paedia. This  was  followed  by  his  being  engaged 
by  Messrs.  Jack  to  edit  the  '  Ordnance  Gazet- 
teer of  Scotland/  a  splendid  work,  which  on 
its  completion  was  made  the  subject  of  a  long 
and  elaborate  article  in  The  Athenceum — an 
article  which  was  a  great  means  of  directing 
attention  to  him,  as  he  always  declared.  Any- 
how, people  now  began  to  inquire  about  Groome. 
In  1880  he  brought  out  '  In  Gypsy  Tents/ 
which  I  shall  describe  further  on.  In  1885  he 
was  chosen  to  join  the  staff  of  Messrs.  W.  &  R. 
Chambers.  It  is  curious  to  think  of  the  "  Tarno 
"  perhaps  the  most  variously  equipped 


FRANCIS   HINDES   GROOME       281 

literary  man  in  Europe,  after  such  adventures 
as  his,  sitting  from  10  to  4  every  day  on  the 
sub-editorial  stool.  He  was  perfectly  content 
on  that  stool,  however,  owing  to  the  genial 
kindness  of  his  colleague.  As  sub-editor  under 
Dr.  Patrick,  and  also  as  a  very  copious  con- 
tributor, he  took  part  in  the  preparation  of  the 
new  edition  of  '  Chambers's  Encyclopaedia.' 
He  took  a  large  part  also  in  preparing  '  Cham- 
bers's Gazetteer  '  and  '  Chambers's  Biographical 
Dictionary.'  Meanwhile  he  was  writing  articles 
in  the  '  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,' 
articles  in  Blackwood's  Magazine  and  The  Book- 
man, and  also  reviews  upon  special  subjects  in 
The  Athenceum. 

This  was  followed  in  1887  by  a  short  Border 
history,  crammed  with  knowledge.  In  1895 
his  name  became  really  familiar  to  the  general 
reader  by  his  delightful  little  volume  '  Two 
Suffolk  Friends ' — sketches  of  his  father  and 
his  father's  friend  Edward  FitzGerald — full  of 
humour  and  admirable  character-drawing. 

In  1896  he  published  his  Romany  novel 
'  Kriegspiel,'  which  did  not  meet  with  any- 
thing like  the  success  it  deserved,  although  I 
must  say  he  was  himself  in  some  degree  answer- 
able for  its  comparative  failure.  The  origin  of 
the  story  was  this.  Shortly  after  our  intimacy 
I  told  him  that  I  had  written  a  gipsy  story 
dealing  with  the  East  Anglian  gipsies  and  the 
Welsh  gipsies,  but  that  it  had  been  so  dinned 


282  OLD    FAMILIAR    FACES 

into  me  by  Borrow  that  in  England  there  was 
no  interest  in  the  gipsies  that  I  had  never  found 
heart  to  publish  it.     Groome  urged  me  to  let 
him  read  it,  and  he  did  read  it,  as  far  as  it  was 
then  complete,   and   took   an  extremely  kind 
view  of  it,  and  urged  me  to  bring  it  out.     But 
now  came  another  and  a  new  cause  for  delay  in 
my  bringing  out  '  Aylwin  ' :    Groome  himself, 
who  at  that  time  knew  more  about  Romany 
matters  than  all  other  Romany  students  of  my 
acquaintance  put  together,  showed  a  remark- 
able gift  as  a  raconteur,  and  I  felt  quite  sure 
that  he  could,  if  he  set  to  work,  write  a  Romany 
story — the  Romany  story  of  the  English  lan- 
guage.    He  strongly  resisted  the  idea  for  a  long 
time — for  two  or  three  years  at  least — and  he 
was  only  persuaded  to  undertake  the  task  at 
last  by  my  telling  him  that  I  would  never  bring 
out  my  story  until  he  brought  out  one  himself. 
At  last  he  yielded,  told  me  of  a  plot,  a  capital 
one,  and  set  to  work  upon  it.    When  it  was 
finished  he  sent  the  manuscript  to  me,  and  I 
read  it  through  with  the  greatest  interest,  and 
also  the  greatest  care.     I  found,  as  I  expected 
to  find,  that  the  gipsy  chapters  were  simply 
perfect,  and  that  it  was  altogether  an  extremely 
clever  romance ;    but  I  felt  also  that  Groome 
had  given  no  attention  whatever  to  the  struc- 
ture of  a  story.     Incidents  of  the  most  striking 
and  original  kind  were  introduced  at  the  wrong 
places,    and   this   made   them   interesting    no 


FRANCIS   HINDES   GROOME       283 

longer.  So  persuaded  was  I  that  the  story 
only  needed  recasting  to  prove  a  real  success 
that  I  devoted  days,  and  even  weeks,  to  going 
through  the  novel,  and  indicating  where  the 
transpositions  should  take  place.  Groome,  how- 
ever, had  got  so  entirely  sick  of  his  novel  before 
he  had  completed  it  that  he  refused  absolutely 
to  put  another  hour's  work  into  it ;  for,  as  he 
said,  "  the  writing  of  it  had  already  been  a  loss 
to  the  pantry." 

JJ  He  sent  it,  as  it  was,  to  an  eminent  firm 
of  publishers,  who,  knowing  Groome  and  his 
abilities,  would  have  willingly  taken  it  if  they 
had  seen  their  way  to  do  so.  But  they  could 
not,  for  the  very  reasons  that  had  induced 
me  to  recast  it,  and  they  declined  it.  The 
book  was  then  sent  round  to  publisher  after 
publisher  with  the  same  result ;  and  yet  there 
was  more  fine  substance  in  this  novel  than  in 
five  ordinary  stories.  It  was  at  last  through 
the  good  offices  of  Mr.  Coulson  Kernahan  that 
it  was  eventually  taken  by  Messrs.  Ward  & 
Lock  ;  and,  although  it  won  warm  eulogies 
from  such  great  writers  as  George  Meredith,  it 
never  made  its  way.  Its  failure  distressed  me 
far  more  than  it  distressed  Groome,  for  I  loved 
the  man,  and  knew  what  its  success  would  have 
been  to  him.  Amiable  and  charming  as  Groome 
was,  there  was  in  him  a  singular  vein  of  dogged 
obstinacy  after  he  had  formed  an  opinion  ;  and 
he  not  only  refused  to  recast  his  story,  but 


284  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

refused  to  abandon  the  absurd  name  of  '  Krieg- 
spiel '  for  a  volume  of  romantic  gipsy  adventure. 
I  suspect  that  a  large  proportion  of  people  who 
asked  for  '  Kriegspiel'  at  Mudie's  and  Smith's 
consisted  of  officers  who  thought  that  it  was 
a  book  on  the  German  war  game. 

I  tried  to  persuade  him  to  begin  another 
gipsy  novel,  but  found  it  quite  impossible 
to  do  so.  But  even  then  I  waited  before 
bringing  out  my  own  prose  story.  I  pub- 
lished instead  my  poem  in  which  was  told 
the  story  of  Rhona  Boswell,  which,  to  my 
own  surprise  and  Groom  e's,  had  a  success, 
notwithstanding  its  gipsy  subject.  Then  I 
brought  out  my  gipsy  story,  and  accepted  its 
success  rather  ungratefully,  remembering  how 
the  greatest  gipsy  scholar  in  the  world  had 
failed  in  this  line.  In  1899  he  published 
'  Gypsy  Folk-Tales/  in  which  he  got  the  aid  of 
the  first  Romany  scholar  now  living,  Mr.  John 
Sampson.  And  this  was  followed  in  1901  by 
his  edition  of  '  Lavengro/  which,  notwithstand- 
ing certain  unnecessary  carpings  at  Borrow — 
such,  for  instance,  as  the  assertion  that  the 
word  "  dook  "  is  never  used  in  Anglo-Romany 
for  "  ghost " — is  beyond  any  doubt  the  best 
edition  of  the  book  ever  published.  The  intro- 
duction gives  sketches  of  all  the  Romany  Ryes 
and  students  of  Romany,  from  Andrew  Boorde 
(c.  1490-1549)  down  to  Mr.  G.  R.  Sims  and 
Mr.  David  MacRitchie.  During  this  time  it 


FRANCIS   HINDES   GROOME       285 

was  becoming  painfully  perceptible  to  me  that 
his  physical  powers  were  waning,  although  for 
two  years  that  decadence  seemed  to  have  no 
effect  upon  his  mental  powers.  But  at  last, 
while  he  was  working  on  a  book  in  which  he 
took  the  deepest  interest — the  new  edition  of 
'  Chambers's  Cyclopaedia  of  English  Literature  ' 
— it  became  manifest  that  the  general  physical 
depression  was  sapping  the  forces  of  the  brain. 

But  it  is  personal  reminiscences  of  Groome 
that  I  have  been  invited  to  write,  and  I  have 
not  yet  even  begun  upon  these.  Our  close 
friendship  dated  no  further  back  than  1881 — 
the  year  in  which  died  the  great  Romany 
Rye.  Indeed,  it  was  owing  to  Sorrow's  death, 
coupled  with  Groome's  interest  in  that  same 
Romany  girl  Sinn  Lovell,  whom  the  eloquent 
Romany  preacher  "  Gipsy  Smith  "  has  lately 
been  expiating  upon  to  immense  audiences, 
that  I  first  became  acquainted  with  Groome. 
Although  he  has  himself  in  some  magazine  told 
the  story,  it  seems  necessary  for  me  to  retell  it 
here,  for  I  know  of  no  better  way  of  giving  the 
readers  of  The  Athenceum  a  picture  of  Frank 
Groome  as  he  lives  in  my  mind. 

It  was  in  1881  that  Borrow,  who  some  seven 
years  before  went  down  to  Oulton,  as  he  told 
me,  "  to  die,"  achieved  death.  And  it  devolved 
upon  me  as  the  chief  friend  of  his  latest  years  to 
write  an  obituary  notice  of  him  in  The  Athen- 
ceum. Among  the  many  interesting  letters 


286  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

that  it  brought  me  from  strangers  was  one  from 
Groome,  whose  name  was  familiar  to  me  as  the 
author  of  the  article  '  Gypsies  '  in  the  '  Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica.'  But  besides  this  I  had  read 
'  In  Gypsy  Tents/  a  picture  of  the  very  kind  of 
gipsies  I  knew  myself,  those  of  East  Anglia — a 
picture  whose  photographic  truth  had  quite 
startled  me.  Howsoever  much  of  matter  of 
fact  may  be  worked  into  '  Lavengro '  (and  to 
no  one  did  Borrow  talk  with  so  little  reticence 
upon  this  delicate  subject  as  to  me  during  many 
a  stroll  about  Wimbledon  Common  and  Rich- 
mond Park),  I  am  certain  that  his  first-hand 
knowledge  of  gipsy  life  was  quite  superficial 
compared  with  Groome's  during  the  nine  years 
or  so  that  he  was  brought  into  contact  with 
them  hi  Great  Britain  and  on  the  Continent. 
Hence  a  book  like  '  In  Gypsy  Tents '  has  for  a 
student  of  Romany  subjects  an  interest  alto- 
gether different  from  that  which  Sorrow's 
books  command ;  for  while  Borrow,  the  man 
of  genius,  throws  by  the  very  necessities  of  his 
temperament  the  colours  of  romance  around 
his  gipsies,  the  characters  of  '  In  Gypsy  Tents,' 
depicted  by  a  man  of  remarkable  talent  merely, 
are  as  realistic  as  though  painted  by  Zola,  while 
the  wealth  of  gipsy  lore  at  his  command  is 
simply  overwhelming. 

At  that  time — with  the  exception  of  Borrow 
and  the  late  Sir  Richard  Burton — the  only 
man  of  letters  with  whom  I  had  been 


FRANCIS   HINDES    GROOME       287 

brought  into  contact  who  knew  anything 
about  the  gipsies  was  Tom  Taylor,  whose 
picture  of  Romany  life  in  an  anonymous  story 
called  '  Gypsy  Experiences/  which  appeared 
in  The  Illustrated  London  News  in  1851,  and 
in  his  play  '  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley/  is  not 
only  fascinating,  but  on  the  whole  true.  By- 
the-by,  this  charming  play  might  be  revived 
now  that  there  is  a  revived  interest  in 
Romany  matters.  George  Meredith's  wonderful 
'  Kiomi '  was  a  picture,  I  think,  of  the  only 
Romany  chi  he  knew  ;  but  genius  such  as  his 
needs  little  straw  for  the  making  of  bricks. 
The  letter  I  received  from  Groome  enclosed  a 
ragged  and  well-worn  cutting  from  a  forgotten 
anonymous  Athenceum  article  of  mine,  written 
as  far  back  as  1877, m  which  I  showed  acquaint- 
ance with  gipsy dom  and  described  the  ascent  of 
Snowdon  in  the  company  of  Sinfi  Lovell,  which 
was  afterwards  removed  bodily  to  '  Aylwin.' 
Here  is  the  cutting  : — 

"  We  had  a  striking  instance  of  this  some 
years  ago,  when  crossing  Snowdon  from  Capel 
Curig,  one  morning,  with  a  friend.  She  was 
not  what  is  technically  called  a  lady,  yet  she 
was  both  tall  and,  in  her  way,  handsome,  and 
was  far  more  clever  than  many  of  those  who 
might  look  down  upon  her  ;  for  her  speculative 
and  her  practical  abilities  were  equally  remark- 
able :  besides  being  the  first  palmist  of  her 
time,  she  had  the  reputation  of  being  able  to 
make  more  clothes-pegs  in  an  hour,  and  sell 


288  OLD   FAMILIAR   FACES 

more,  than  any  other  woman  in  England.  The 
splendour  of  that  '  Snowdon  sunrise  '  was  such 
as  we  can  say,  from  much  experience,  can  only 
be  seen  about  once  in  a  lifetime,  and  could 
never  be  given  by  any  pen  or  pencil.  '  You 
don't  seem  to  enjoy  it  a  bit,'  was  the  irritated 
remark  we  could  not  help  making  to  our  friend, 
who  stood  quite  silent  and  apparently  deaf  to 
the  rhapsodies  in  which  we  had  been  indulging, 
as  we  both  stood  looking  at  the  peaks,  or  rather 
at  the  vast  masses  of  billowy  vapours  envelop- 
ing them,  as  they  sometimes  boiled  and  some- 
times blazed,  shaking,  whenever  the  sun  struck 
one  and  then  another,  from  amethyst  to  ver- 
milion, '  shot '  now  and  then  with  gold.  '  Don't 
injiy  it,  don't  I  ?  '  said  she,  removing  her  pipe. 
'  You  injiy  talking  about  it,  /  injiy  lettin'  it 
soak  in.'  " 

Groome  asked  whether  the  gipsy  mentioned 
in  the  cutting  was  not  a  certain  Romany  chi 
whom  he  named,  and  said  that  he  had  always 
wondered  who  the  writer  of  that  article  was, 
and  that  now  he  wondered  no  longer,  for  he 
knew  him  to  be  the  writer  of  the  obituary 
notice  of  George  Borrow.  Interested  as  I  was 
in  his  letter,  it  came  at  a  moment  when  the 
illness  of  a  very  dear  friend  of  mine  threw  most 
other  things  out  of  my  mind,  and  it  was  a  good 
while  before  I  answered  it,  and  told  him  what 
I  had  to  tell  about  my  Welsh  gipsy  experiences 
and  the  adventure  on  Snowdon.  I  got  another 
letter  from  him,  and  this  was  the  beginning  of 
a  charming  correspondence.  After  a  while 


FRANCIS    HINDES    GROOME       289 

I  discovered  that  there  were,  besides  Romany 
matters,  other  points  of  attraction  between  us. 
Groome  was  the  son  of  Edward  FitzGerald's 
intimate  friend  Robert  Hindes  Groome,  Arch- 
deacon of  Suffolk.  Now  long  before  the  great 
vogue  of  Omar  Khayyam,  and,  of  course,  long 
before  the  institution  of  the  Omar  Khayyam 
Club,  there  was  a  little  group  of  Omarians  of 
which  I  was  a  member.  I  need  not  say  here 
who  were  the  others  of  that  group,  but  it  was 
to  them  I  alluded  in  the  '  Toast  to  Omar 
Khayyam,'  which  years  afterwards  I  printed 
in  The  Athenaum,  and  have  since  reprinted  in 
a  volume  of  mine. 

After  a  while  it  was  arranged  that  he  was  to 
come  and  visit  us  for  a  few  days  at  The  Pines. 
When  it  got  wind  in  the  little  household  here 
that  another  Romany  Rye,  a  successor  to 
George  Borrow,  was  to  visit  us,  and  when  it 
further  became  known  that  he  had  travelled 
with  Hungarian  gipsies,  Roumanian  gipsies, 
Roumelian  gipsies,  &c.,  I  don't  know  what  kind 
of  wild  and  dishevelled  visitor  was  not  expected. 
Instead  of  such  a  guest  there  appeared  one  of 
the  neatest  and  most  quiet  young  gentlemen 
who  had  ever  presented  themselves  at  the  door. 
No  one  could  possibly  have  dared  to  associate 
Bohemia  with  him.  As  a  friend  remarked  who 
was  afterwards  invited  to  meet  him  at  luncheon, 
"  Clergyman's  son — suckling  for  the  Church, 
was  stamped  upon  him  from  head  to  foot." 


2QO  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

I  will  not  deny  that  so  respectable  a  looking 
Romany  Rye  rather  disappointed  The  Pines  at 
first.  At  that  time  he  was  a  little  over  thirty, 
but  owing  to  his  slender,  graceful  figure,  and 
especially  owing  to  his  lithe  movements  and 
elastic  walk,  he  seemed  to  be  several  years 
younger. 

The  subject  of  Welsh  gipsies,  and  especially 
of  the  Romany  chi  of  Swindon,  made  us  inti- 
mate friends  in  half  an  hour,  and  then  there 
were  East  Anglia,  Omar  Khayyam,  and  Edward 
FitzGerald  to  talk  about ! — a  delightful  new 
friend  for  a  man  who  had  so  lately  lost  the  only 
other  Romany  Rye  in  the  world.  Owing  to  his 
youthful  appearance,  I  christened  him  there 
and  then  the  "  Tarno  Rye,"  in  remembrance 
of  that  other  '  Tarno  Rye "  whom  Rhona 
Boswell  loved.  I  soon  found  that,  great  as  was 
the  physical  contrast  between  the  Tarno  Rye 
and  the  original  Romany  Rye,  the  mental 
contrast  was  greater  still.  Both  were  shy — 
very  shy  ;  but  while  Sorrow's  shyness  seemed 
to  be  born  of  wariness,  the  wariness  of  a  man 
who  felt  that  he  was  famous  and  had  a  part  to 
play  before  an  inquisitive  world,  Groome's 
shyness  arose  from  a  modesty  that  was  unique. 

As  a  philologist  merely,  to  speak  of  nothing- 
else,  his  equipment  was  ten  times  that  of 
Borrow,  whose  temperament  may  be  called 
anti-academic,  and  who  really  knew  nothing 
thoroughly.  But  while  Borrow  was  for  ever 


FRANCIS   HINDES    GROOME       291 

displaying  his  philology,  and  seemed  always  far 
prouder  of  it  than  of  his  fascinating  powers  as 
a  writer  of  romantic  adventures,  Groome's 
philological  stores,  like  all  his  other  intellectual 
riches,  had  to  be  drawn  from  him  by  his  inter- 
locutor if  they  were  to  be  recognized  at  all. 
Whenever  Borrow  enunciated  anything  show- 
ing, as  he  thought,  exceptional  philological 
knowledge  or  exceptional  acquaintance  with 
matters  Romany,  it  was  his  way  always  to 
bring  it  out  with  a  sort  of  rustic  twinkle  of 
conscious  superiority,  which  in  its  way,  how- 
ever, was  very  engaging.  From  Groome,  on 
the  contrary,  philological  lore  would  drop,  when 
it  did  come,  as  unconsciously  as  drops  of  rain 
that  fall.  It  was  the  same  with  his  knowledge 
of  Romany  matters,  which  was  so  vast.  Not 
once  in  all  my  close  intercourse  with  him  did 
he  display  his  knowledge  of  this  subject  save 
in  answer  to  some  inquiry.  The  same  thing  is 
to  be  noticed  in  '  Kriegspiel.'  Romany  students 
alone  are  able  by  reading  between  the  lines  to 
discover  how  deep  is  the  hidden  knowledge  of 
Romany  matters,  so  full  is  the  story  of  allusions 
which  are  lost  upon  the  general  reader — lost, 
indeed,  upon  all  readers  except  the  very  few. 
For  instance,  the  gipsy  villain  of  the  story, 
Perun,  when  telling  the  tale  of  his  crime 
against  the  father  of  the  hero  who  married  the 
Romany  chi  whom  Perun  had  hoped  to  marry, 
makes  allusion  thus  to  the  dead  woman : 


292  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

"  And  then  about  her  as  I  have  named  too  often 
to-day."  Had  Borrow  been  alluding  to  the 
Romany  taboo  of  the  names  of  the  dead,  how 
differently  would  he  have  gone  to  work  !  how 
eager  would  he  have  been  to  display  and  explain 
his  knowledge  of  this  remarkable  Romany 
superstition  !  The  same  remark  may  be  made 
upon  the  gipsy  heroine's  sly  allusion  in  '  Krieg- 
spiel '  to  "  Squire  Lucas,"  the  Romany  equiva- 
lent of  Baron  Munchausen,  an  allusion  which 
none  but  a  Romany  student  would  understand. 

Before  luncheon  Groome  and  I  took  a  walk 
over  the  common,  and  along  the  Portsmouth 
Road,  through  the  Robin  Hood  Gate  and 
across  Richmond  Park,  where  Borrow  and  I 
and  Dr.  Hake  had  so  often  strolled.  I  won- 
dered what  the  Gryengroes  whom  Borrow  used 
to  foregather  with  would  have  thought  of  my 
new  friend.  In  personal  appearance  the  two 
Romany  Ryes  were  as  unlike  as  in  every  point 
of  character  they  were  unlike.  Borrow's  giant 
frame  made  him  stand  conspicuous  wherever 
he  went,  Groome's  slender,  slight  body  gave  an 
impression  of  great  agility ;  and  the  walk  of 
the  two  great  pedestrians  was  equally  con- 
trasted. Borrow's  slope  over  the  ground  with 
the  loose,  long  step  of  a  hound  I  have,  on  a 
previous  occasion,  described ;  Groome's  walk 
was  springy  as  a  gipsy  lad's,  and  as  noiseless  as 
a  cat's. 

Of  course,  the  talk  during  that  walk  ran  very 


FRANCIS    HINDES    GROOME       293 

much  upon  Borrow,  whom  Groome  had  seen 
once  or  twice,  but  whom  he  did  not  in  the  least 
understand.  The  two  men  were  antipathetic 
to  each  other.  It  was  then  that  he  told  me 
how  he  had  first  been  thrown  across  the  gipsies, 
and  it  was  then  that  he  began  to  open  up  to 
me  his  wonderful  record  of  experiences  among 
them.  The  talk  during  that  first  out  of  many 
most  delightful  strolls  ran  upon  Benfey,  and 
afterwards  upon  all  kinds  of  Romany  matters. 
I  remember  how  warm  he  waxed  upon  his  pet 
aversion,  "  Smith  of  Coalville,"  as  he  called  him, 
who,  he  said,  for  the  purposes  of  a  professional 
philanthropist,  had  done  infinite  mischief  to 
the  gipsies  by  confounding  them  with  all  the 
wandering  cockney  raff  from  the  slums  of 
London.  On  my  repeating  to  him  what,  among 
other  things,  the  Romany  chi  before  mentioned 
said  to  me  during  the  ascent  of  Snowdon  from 
Capel  Curig,  that  "  to  make  kairengroes  (house- 
dwellers)  of  full-blooded  Romanies  was  impos- 
sible, because  they  were  the  cuckoos  of  the 
human  race,  who  had  no  desire  to  build  nests, 
and  were  pricked  on  to  move  about  from  one 
place  to  another  over  the  earth,"  Groome's 
tongue  became  loosened,  and  he  launched  out 
into  a  monologue  on  this  subject  full  of  learning 
and  full,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  of  original  views 
upon  the  Romanies. 

As  an  instance  of  the  cuckoo  instincts  of  the 
true  Romany,  he  told  me  that  in  North  America 


294  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

— for  which  land,  alas  !  so  many  of  our  best 
Romanies  even  in  Borrow's  time  were  leaving 
Gypsey  Dell  and  the  grassy  lanes  of  old  England 
— the  gipsies  have  contracted  a  habit,  which  is 
growing  rather  than  waning,  of  migrating  south- 
ward in  autumn  and  northward  again  in  spring. 
He  then  launched  out  upon  the  subject  of  the 
wide  dispersion  of  the  Romanies  not  only  in 
Europe — where  they  are  found  from  almost 
the  extreme  north  to  the  extreme  south,  and 
from  the  shores  of  the  Bosphorus  to  the  shores 
of  the  Atlantic  Ocean — but  also  from  north  to 
south  and  from  east  to  west  in  Asia,  in  Africa, 
from  Egypt  to  the  very  south  of  the  Soudan, 
and  in  America  from  Canada  to  the  River 
Amazon.  And  he  then  went  on  to  show  how 
intensely  migratory  they  were  over  all  these 
vast  areas. 

So  absorbing  had  been  the  gipsy  talk  that 
I  am  afraid  the  waiting  luncheon  was  spoilt. 
The  little  luncheon  party  was  composed  of 
fervent  admirers  of  Sir  Walter  Scott — bigoted 
admirers,  I  fear,  some  of  our  present-day 
critics  would  have  dubbed  us  ;  and  it  chanced 
that  we  all  agreed  in  pronouncing  '  Guy  Man- 
nering '  to  be  the  most  fascinating  of  all  the 
Wizard's  work.  Of  course  Meg  Merrilies  became 
at  once  the  centre  of  the  talk.  One  contended 
that,  great  as  Meg  was  as  a  woman,  she  was  as 
a  gipsy  a  failure  ;  in  short;  that  Scott's  idea  of 
the  Scottish  gipsy  woman  was  conventional 


FRANCIS    HINDES    GROOME       295 

— a  fancy  portrait  in  which  are  depicted 
some  of  the  loftiest  characteristics  of  the 
Highland  woman  rather  than  of  the  Scottish 
gipsy.  The  true  romany  chi  can  be  quite 
as  noble  as  Meg  Merrilies,  said  one,  but 
great  in  a  different  way.  From  Meg  Merrilies 
the  talk  naturally  turned  upon  Jane  Gordon 
of  Kirk  Yetholm,  Meg's  prototype,  who,  when 
an  old  woman,  was  ducked  to  death  in  the 
River  Eden  at  Carlisle.  Then  came  the  subject 
of  Kirk  Yetholm  itself,  the  famous  headquarters 
of  the  Scotch  Romanies  ;  and  after  this  it 
naturally  turned  to  Kirk  Yetholm's  most  famous 
inhabitant,  old  Will  Faas,  the  gipsy  king,  whose 
corpse  was  escorted  to  Yetholm  by  three  hun- 
dred and  more  donkeys.  And  upon  all  these 
subjects  Groome's  knowledge  was  like  an  in- 
exhaustible fountain  ;  or  rather  it  was  like  a 
tap,  ready  to  supply  any  amount  of  lore  when 
called  upon  to  do  so. 

But  it  was  not  merely  upon  Romany  subjects 
that  Groome  found  points  of  sympathy  at  The 
Pines  during  that  first  luncheon  ;  there  was 
that  other  subject  before  mentioned,  Edward 
FitzGerald  and  Omar  Khayyam.  We,  a  handful 
of  Omarians  of  those  antediluvian  days,  were 
perhaps  all  the  more  intense  in  our  cult  because 
wre  believed  'it  to  be  esoteric.  And  here  was  a 
guest  who  had  been  brought  into  actual  personal 
contact  with  the  wonderful  old  Fitz.  As  a 
child  of  eight  he  had  seen  him — talked  with  him 


296  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

— been  patted  on  the  head  by  him.  Groome's 
father,  the  Archdeacon  of  Suffolk,  was  one  of 
FitzGerald's  most  intimate  friends.  This  was 
at  once  a  delightful  and  a  powerful  link  between 
Frank  Groome  and  those  at  the  luncheon  table  ; 
and  when  he  heard,  as  he  soon  did,  the  toast  to 
"  Omar  Khayyam,"  none  drank  that  toast  with 
more  gusto  than  he.  The  fact  is,  as  the  Ro- 
manies say,  that  true  friendship,  like  true  love, 
is  apt  to  begin  at  first  sight.  But  I  must  stop. 
Frequently  when  the  "  Tarno  Rye  "  came  to 
England  his  headquarters  were  at  The  Pines. 
Many  and  delightful  were  the  strolls  he  and 
I  had  together.  One  day  we  went  to  hear  a 
gipsy  band  supposed  to  be  composed  of  Rou- 
melian  gipsies.  After  we  had  listened  to  several 
well-executed  things  Groome  sauntered  up  to 
one  of  the  performers  and  spoke  to  him  in 
Roumelian  Romany.  The  man,  although  he 
did  not  understand  Groome,  knew  that  he  was 
speaking  Romany  of  some  kind,  and  began 
speaking  in  Hungarian  Romany,  and  was  at 
once  responded  to  by  Groome  in  that  variety 
of  the  Romany  tongue.  Groome  then  turned  to 
another  of  the  performers,  and  was  answered  in 
English  Romany.  At  last  he  found  one,  and 
one  only,  in  the  band  who  was  a  Roumelian 
gipsy,  and  a  conversation  between  them  at 
once  began. 

This  incident  affords  an  illustration  of  the 
width  as  well  as  the  thoroughness  of  Groome's 


FRANCIS    HINDES    GROOME       297 

knowledge  of  Romany  matters.  I  have  affirmed 
in  '  Aylwin  '  that  Sinn  Lovell — a  born  linguist 
who  could  neither  read  nor  write — was  the  only 
gipsy  who  knew  both  English  and  Welsh 
Romany.  Groome  was  one  of  the  few  English- 
men who  knew  the  most  interesting  of  all 
varieties  of  the  Romany  tongue.  But  latterly 
he  talked  a  great  deal  of  the  vast  knowledge  of 
the  Welsh  gipsies,  both  as  to  language  and  folk- 
lore, possessed  by  Mr.  John  Sampson,  Univer- 
sity Librarian  at  Liverpool,  the  scholar  who  did 
so  much  to  aid  Groome  in  his  last  volume  on 
Romany  subjects,  called  '  Gypsy  Folk-Tales.' 
It  therefore  gives  me  the  greatest  pleasure  to 
end  these  very  inadequate  words  of  mine  with 
a  beautiful  little  poem  in  Welsh  Romany  by 
Mr.  Sampson  upon  the  death  of  the  "  Tarno 
Rye."  In  a  very  few  years  Welsh  Romany  will 
become  absolutely  extinct,  and  then  this  little 
gem,  so  full  of  the  Romany  feeling,  will  be 
greatly  prized.  I  wish  I  could  have  written 
the  poem  myself,  but  no  man  could  have 
written  it  save  Mr.  Sampson  : — 

STANYAKERESKI. 

Romano  raia,  prala,  jinimangro, 

Konyo  chumerava  to  chikat, 
Shukar  Java  mangi,  ta  mukava 

Tut  te  'ja  kamd6m  me— kushki  rat  I 

Kamli,  savimaski,  sas  i  sarla, 
Baro  zi  sas  tut,  sar,  tarno  rom, 

Lhatian  i  jivimaski  patrin, 
Ta  Han  o  purikeno  drom. 


298  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

Boshad^  i  chirikld  veshtendi ; 

Sanite  'pre  tuti  chal  ta  chai ; 
Muri,  puv  ta  pani  tu  kame'sas 

Dudyeras  o  sonako  lilai. 

Palla  'vena  brishin,  shil,  la  baval : 
Sa'o  dive's  tu  murshkines  pirdan  : 

Ako  kino  'vesa,  rat  avela, 
Cheros  si  te  kesa  tiro  tan. 

Parl  o  tamlo  merimasko  pani 
Dava  tuki  miro  vast,  ta  so 

Tu  kamesas  tire  kokoreski 

Mai  kamava — •'  Te  soves  misto  ! " 

Translation. 

TO   FRANCIS    HINDES   GROOME. 

Scholar,  Gypsy,  Brother,  Student, 
Peacefully  I  kiss  thy  forehead, 

Quietly  I  depart  and  leave 
Thee  whom  I  loved — "  Good  night." 

Sunny,  smiling-  was  the  morning- ; 

A  light  heart  was  thine,  as,  a  youth, 
Thou  dids't  strike  life's  trail 

And  take  the  ancient  road. 

The  birds  sang  in  the  woods, 
Man  and  maid  laughed  on  thee, 

The  hills,  field,  and  water  thou  didst  love 
The  golden  summer  illuminated. 

Then  come  the  rain,  cold,  and  wind, 
All  the  day  thou  hast  tramped  bravely. 

Now  thou  growest  weary,  night  comes  on. 
It  is  time  to  make  thy  tent. 

Across  death's  dark  stream 

I  give  thee  my  hand ;  and  what 

Thou  wouldst  have  desired  for  thyself 
I  wish  thee — mayst  thou  sleep  well. 


II. 

ALTHOUGH  novelists,  dramatists,  and 
poets  are  particularly  fond  of  trying 
to  paint  the  gipsies,  it  cannot  be  said 
that  many  of  them  have  been  successful  in 
their  delineations.  And  this  is  because  the 
inner  and  the  outer  life  of  a  proscribed  race 
must  necessarily  be  unlike  each  other.  Meg 
Merrilies  is  no  more  a  gipsy  than  is 
Borrow's  delightful  Isopel  Berners.  Among 
the  characteristic  traits  of  the  Romany  woman, 
Meg  does  no  doubt  exhibit  two  :  a  wild  poetic 
imagination  and  a  fearlessness  such  as  women 
rarely  display.  But  no  one  who  had  been 
brought  into  personal  contact  with  gipsy  women 
could  ever  have  presented  Meg  Merrilies  as  one 
of  them.  In  the  true  Romany  chi  poetic 
imagination  is  combined  with  a  homeliness  and 
a  positive  love  of  respectability  which  are  very 
curious.  Not  that  Meg,  noble  as  she  is,  is 
superior  to  the  kind  of  heroic  woman  that  the 
Romany  race  is  capable  of  producing.  Indeed, 
the  great  speciality  of  the  Romanies  is  the 
superiority  of  the  women  to  the  men — a  supe- 
riority which  extends  to  everything,  unless, 
perhaps,  we  except  that  gift  of  music  for  which 
the  gipsies  are  noticeable.  Even  in  Eastern 

299 


300  OLD    FAMILIAR   FACES 

Europe — Russia  alone  excepted — where  gipsy 
music  is  so  universal  that,  according  to  some 
writers,  every  Hungarian  musician  is  of  Romany 
extraction,  it  is  the  men  and  not,  in  general, 
the  women  who  excel.  This,  however,  may 
simply  be  the  result  of  opportunity  and  training. 
It  is  not  merely  in  intelligence,  in  imagination, 
in  command  over  language,  in  breadth  of  view 
regarding  the  "  Gorgio  "  world  around  them, 
that  the  Romany  women,  in  Great  Britain  at 
least,  leave  the  men  far  behind.  In  character 
this  superiority  is  equally  noticeable.  To  ima- 
gine a  gipsy  hero  is  not  easy.  The  male  gipsy 
is  not  without  a  certain  amount  of  courage, 
but  it  soon  gives  way,  and  in  a  physical  conflict 
between  a  gipsy  and  an  Englishman  it  always 
seems  as  though  ages  of  oppression  have  damped 
its  virility.  Although  some  of  our  most  notable 
prizefighters  have  been  gipsies,  it  used  to  be 
well  known  in  times  when  the  ring  was  fashion- 
able that  a  gipsy  could  not  be  relied  upon  "  to 
take  punishment  "  with  the  stolid  indifference 
of  an  Englishman  or  a  negro,  partly,  perhaps, 
because  his  more  highly  strung  nervous  system 
makes  him  more  sentive  to  pain.  The  courage 
of  a  gipsy  woman,  on  the  other  hand,  has  passed 
into  a  proverb  ;  nothing  seems  to  daunt  her, 
and  yet  she  will  allow  her  husband,  a  cowardly 
ruffian  himself,  perhaps,  to  strike  her  without 
returning  the  blow.  Wife-beating,  however,  is 
not  common  among  the  gipsies.  It  may  pos- 


30i 

sibly  be  the  case  that  some  of  the  fine  qualities 
of  the  gipsy  woman  are  the  result  of  that  very 
barrenness  of  fine  qualities  among  the  men  of 
which  we  have  been  speaking.  The  lack  of 
masculine  chivalry  among  the  men  may  in  some 
measure  account  for  the  irresistible  impulse 
among  the  women  for  taking  their  own  part 
without  appealing  to  the  men  for  aid.  Also 
this  may  account  for  the  strong  way  in  which 
a  gipsy  woman  is  often  drawn  to  the  "  Tarno 
Rye,"  the  young  English  gentleman  of  whom 
Matthew  Arnold  was  thinking  when  he  wrote 
the  '  Scholar-Gipsy/  and  her  fidelity  to  whom 
is  so  striking.  It  is  often  in  such  relations  as 
these  with  the  Tarno  Rye  that  the  instinct  of 
monogamy  in  the  Romany  woman  is  seen. 
The  unconquerable  virtue  of  the  Romany  chi 
was  often  commented  upon  by  Borrow ;  and, 
indeed,  every  observer  of  gipsy  life  is  struck 
by  it. 

Seeing  that  the  moment  the  Romanies  are 
brought  into  contact  with  the  Gorgio  world 
they  adopt  a  method  of  approach  entirely 
different  from  the  natural  method — natural  to 
them  in  intercourse  with  each  other — it  is  per- 
haps no  wonder  that  the  popular  notion  of 
the  gipsy  girl,  taken  mainly  from  the  tradition 
of  the  stage,  is  so  fantastically  wrong.  With 
regard  to  the  stage,  no  characters  in  the 
least  like  gipsies  ever  appeared  on  the 
boards,  save  the  characters  in  Tom  Taylor's 


302  OLD    FAMILIAR    FACES 

'  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley/  In  the  eyes  of 
the  novelist,  as  well  as  in  the  eyes  of 
the  playwright,  devilry  seems  to  be  the  chief 
characteristic  of  the  gipsy  woman.  The  fact 
is,  however,  that  in  the  average  gipsy  woman 
as  she  really  exists  there  is  but  little  devilry. 
"  Romany  guile,"  which  is  well  denned  in  the 
gipsy  phrase  as  "  the  lie  for  the  Gorgios,"  does 
not  prevent  gipsy  women  from  retaining  some 
of  the  most  marked  characteristics  of  childhood 
throughout  their  lives.  This,  indeed,  is  one  of 
their  special  charms.  In  his  desire  to  depict 
the  supposed  devilry  of  the  Romany  woman, 
Prosper  Merimee  has  perpetrated  in  '  Carmen ' 
the  greatest  of  all  caricatures  of  the  gipsy  girl. 
A  mere  incarnation  of  lust  and  bloodthirstiness 
is  more  likely  to  exist  in  any  other  race  than  in 
the  Romanies,  who  have  a  great  deal  of  love  as 
a  sentiment  and  comparatively  very  little  of 
love  as  a  movement  of  animal  desire. 

In  G.  P.  R.  James's  '  Gipsy  '  (1835)  there 
are  touches  which  certainly  show  some  original 
knowledge  of  Romany  life  and  character.  The 
same  may,  perhaps,  be  said  of  Sheridan  Le 
Fanu's  '  Bird  of  Passage/  but  the  pictures  of 
gipsy  life  in  these  and  in  all  other  novels  are 
the  merest  daubs  compared  with  the  Kiomi  of 
George  Meredith's  story  '  Harry  Richmond/ 
Not  even  Borrow  and  Groome,  with  all  their 
intimate  knowledge  of  gipsy  life,  ever  painted 
a  more  vigorous  picture  of  the  Romany  chi 


FRANCIS    HINDES    GROOME       303 

than  this.  The  original  was  well  known  in  the 
art  circles  of  London  at  one  time,  and  was 
probably  known  to  Meredith,  but  this  does  not 
in  any  way  derogate  from  the  splendour  of  the 
imaginative  achievement  of  painting  in  a  few 
touches  a  Romany  girl  who  must,  one  would 
think,  live  for  ever. 

Between  some  Englishmen  and  gipsy  women 
there  is  an  extraordinary  attraction — an  attrac- 
tion, we  may  say  in  passing,  which  did  not 
exist  between  Borrow  and  the  gipsy  women 
with  whom  he  was  brought  into  contact. 
Supposing  Borrow  to  have  been  physically 
drawn  to  any  woman,  she  would  have  been  of 
the  Scandinavian  type ;  she  would  have  been 
what  he  used  to  call  a  Brynhild.  It  was  tall 
blondes  he  really  admired.  Hence,  notwith- 
standing his  love  of  the  economies  of  gipsy  life, 
his  gipsy  women  are  all  mere  "  scenic  cha- 
racters " — they  clothe  and  beautify  the  scene  ; 
they  are  not  dramatic  characters.  When  he 
comes  to  delineate  a  heroine,  Isopel  Berners, 
she  is  physically  the  very  opposite  of  the 
Romany  chi — a  Scandinavian  Brynhild,  in  short. 


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